Grief work
Photo: Homer in the British Museum. From Wikipedia.
For our grief we’ll need the strong stuff. We’ll have to go back, all the way to the beginning, to Homer.
This is from War Music, Christopher Logue’s account (not an exact translation) of Books 16-19 of Homer’s Iliad. While prowling around the bookstore yesterday I literally tripped over the Logue. If not for the pain in my foot I might never have opened it, but I did and it was like being shocked into full consciousness. This is what literature is for. I don’t want to hear that everything is going to be fine and dandy because that would be a lie. I need to be reminded that although life is cruel and full of sorrow, it holds out the possibility of the sublime.
from War Music (an account of books 16-19 of Homer’s Iliad)
by Christopher Logue
Down on your knees, Achilles. Farther down.
Now forward on your hands and put your face into the dirt,
And scrub it to and fro.
Grief has you by the hair with one
And with the forceps of its other hand
Uses your mouth to trowel the dogshit up;
Watches you lift your arms to Heaven; and then
Pounces and screws your nose into the filth.
Gods have plucked drawstrings from your head,
And from the templates of your upper lip
Modelled their bows.
Not now. Not since
Your grieving reaches out and pistol-whips
That envied face, until
Frightened to bear your black, backbreaking agony alone,
You sank, throat back, thrown back, your voice
Thrown out across the sea to reach your Source.
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June 11th, 2010 at 17:04
“This is what literature is for. I don’t want to hear that everything is going to be fine and dandy because that would be a lie. I need to be reminded that although life is cruel and full of sorrow, it holds out the possibility of the sublime.”
Amen!