Tuesday, September 5
READING THOM GUNN'S LAMENT
Four doves flew by
as I approached the window
oblique and shaken, having had a cry
over a lament by a poet, suddenly a widow.
His loss was restless, no repose
for endings, intractable and cruel,
and even then, it took me in, a reprise
of grief uncomprehending, the way it crawls
around you but is nowhere in particular,
finds renewal, and takes some getting used to.
Isn’t it true that absence is a reticulated
presence, its shade the shadow following you?
(Diane Mehta)