Dirge Without Music by Edna St Vincent Millay

Just a note before I faithfully re-type the poem.

Books and poetry can, I think, be a little like a towel-wrapped keepsake that was buried down the bottom of a moving-house box full of 'non-essentials' - re-discovery upon re-opening can re-create the world, as it was, way back then, not only when it was wrapped, but also when the whatever-it-was was birthed, into your life, as it was, then.

Thus it is for me, with the reading of this poem, this week. I discovered this poem when I was eighteen - it seemed so mature, then. I read it now and it feels, well, a little simple, but that might have a lot to do with familiarity. I memorised it by heart, then. And it's funny, but this week seems to have shown me a whole chunk of Trish that was wrapped up around 'not being resigned'. The refusal to let it go, to diminish it's importance in time. Until time herself took over.

There can barely be a person left around the echo-chamber of my airwaves who hasn't heard my theory about the importance of favourite childhood fairytales in the operation of schemas as we progress throughout our human lives. I've only seen the schema of this very poem, this week, echoed backwards throughout my history. There's a grab in some information, some storylines, some characters, it's sharper than a resonance, closer to an intuition than an instinct. The moment of encounter sets up a chain of outcomes that we as humans barely register as they happen, much less stand any chance of piecing together out of the clash and the whirl that is participation in exalted person-skins.

Though I am a gal of varied and wild magi-mysti inclinations. :)

So here, is 'Dirge Without Music' by Edna St Vincent Millay.

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 & keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They have 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.