Easters
by Donald Hall
from The Painted Bed (2002)
The epigraph to this book comes from the Urdu poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, and reads: “The true subject of poetry / is the death of the beloved.”
Note that Hall is the widower of the American poet, Jane Kenyon, who died in 1995.
On the first of the four Easters
she could still swallow, and six
days before death took her last
Communion. The tall young minister
prayed as if taking dictation
from a dying bloodstream.
On the second Easter I orbited
the world in a lust of quickness
that bloodied itself into rage
imagining murder, and collapsed
to despair. Nowhere among blasted
lilies could grace find an earth.
On the third Easter I sang hymns
and remembered earlier Aprils
when we gathered cold on the hill
at sunrise by Ansel and Edna's house,
ate homemade bacon and hot cross buns.
The grave remained the grave.
On the fourth Easter the passionate
minister with the face of a boy
spoke as he blessed Communion,
and my spirit lightened for the first
time since her death at the image
of a tomb opened, a hooded figure.
Now it is May: green hay, black flies,
and the returning peonies, each
year smaller without her attentions.
Ivisit her grave walking with Gus
but without ghosts; with daffodils,
carved names, and one year blank.
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