Grief, they say, is personal,
Else there’d be no grief at all.
We, exempt from grief and rage,
Rule here our new impersonal age.
Now while dry is every eye
The last grief is passing by.
History takes its final turn
Where all’s to mourn for, none to mourn.
Idle justice sits alone
In a world to order grown.
Justice never shed a tear,
And if justice we would bear
We must get another face,
Find a smoother tale to tell
Where everything is in its place
And happiness inevitable.
(Long, long ago, the old men say,
A famous wife, Penelope,
For twenty years the pride of Greece,
Wove and unwove a web all day
That might have keen a masterpiece—
If she had let it have its way—
To drive all artistry to despair
And set the sober world at play
Beyond the other side of care,
And lead a fabulous era in.
But still she said, “Where I begin
Must I return, else all is lost,
And great Odysseus tempest-tossed
Will perish, shipwrecked on my art.
But so, I guide him to the shore.”
And again the web she tore,
No more divided from her heart.)
Oh here the hot heart petrifies
And the round earth to rock is grown
In the winter of our eyes;
Heart and earth a single stone,
Until the stony barrier break
Grief and joy no mote shall wake.