Aftermath

Aftermath

     Willa Cather, 1873 - 1947

Can’st thou conjure a vanished morn of spring,

     Or bid the ashes of the sunset glow

Again to redness? Are we strong to wring

     From trodden grapes the juice drunk long ago?

Can leafy longings stir in Autumn’s blood,

     Or can I wear a pearl dissolved in wine,

Or go a-Maying in a winter wood,

     Or paint with youth thy wasted cheek, or mine?

What bloom, then, shall abide, since ours hath sped?

     Thou art more lost to me than they who dwell

In Egypt’s sepulchres, long ages fled;

     And would I touch—Ah me! I might as well

Covet the gold of Helen’s vanished head,

     Or kiss back Cleopatra from the dead!

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I love this poem by Willa Cather.  It expresses for me the sheer finality; the void, of loss. The impossibility, try as one might, to conjure up in the mind’s eye (or the soul’s) a tangible memory of one’s dear departed.  The futility of trying to grasp an echo of their presence wrestles with the guilty ache that one so dearly loved could be so completely absent from a day’s experience.  -JoMae