Dirge Without Music
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, — but the best is lost.The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love, —
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
Our friend, Facundo Montenegro, died yesterday from lung cancer. He was a young man, and this loss is a sad one for all who knew him.
A year doesn’t seem like an especially long time. I saw Facundo a year ago. He seemed fine.
I don’t understand. I don’t want to understand. But I do want to understand. I want this to be categorizable into some neat little box that will enable me to put it away on a shelf where I won’t have to contemplate it suddenly in the middle of the night or when I’m thinking back on a fun day. I want to be able to say that if only this had happened or that hadn’t happened, his early death could have been avoided. I don’t want people to just die. I want there to be a reason.
When I was small, I saw a movie in which two children died. Why, I sobbed to my father later that night. Why did they have to die? And he explained why. That’s the nice thing about literature — characters aren’t allowed to die willy-nilly. There has to be a purpose to furthering the plot or the character development of your protagonist. It can be the result of choices the character has made. But there’s an unspoken bond between the author and the reader that there is, in fact, a reason for each death.
That’s the problem with real life. There’s no agreement. We try to pretend that there is one, that people just don’t die for no reason. There has to be a purpose. A graspable, understandable cause for the untimely demise of a loved one, anyone’s loved one.
But there isn’t. And that’s so hard to get my arms around.
Facundo, I’m sorry I wasn’t able to wish you well on your final journey. My best wishes and intentions hurry after you along the path you’ve taken.
And my grief remains here to bind me to the others who have been left behind in the shadow caused by the absence of your immense light.
Pax…