Friday, April 13, 2018

101 Poems, Number 90


Favorite Poems Throughout My Life


90: “The Courage That My Mother Had,”draft in 1942, pub. 1954, by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950)

Some poems have a history—
Are piercing with their pain,
And this brought tears into my eyes
So recently—again.

She wrote about her mother’s death
In 1931.
A painful death for Vincent,* who
Knew what it had begun:

The long cortège of loved ones, who
Proceeded to the grave.
A line that swells and soon becomes
A grim, black tidal wave.

When Joyce’s mother died, I said
These lines to praise her life.
I wept as I was doing so—
And so did Joyce, my wife.

Then—just last week—my mother’s turn—
The words she could not hear.
Oh, what I’d give to whisper them
Into her living ear.

I wept again there in that church
As I recited lines
And wished that they could could ever serve
As endless anodynes.

*What all her friends and family called her.

Link to poem.

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