You Who Grieve Poem by Roy William Gotaas

With you who grieve I have watched:
Seen the white coffin carried by one man;
Felt the too-soonness of young life ended,
Sung the words “Look upon a little child” and choked.

I have embraced the red-eyed widow
And murmured quack-words that bring no comfort
But ease us past the moment that can’t truthfully be shared.
It’s the first agony of many such to be faced alone:
Loneliness being the chief pain.

We grieve, all together............
I grieve..................

“Put it to the back of your mind! ”
“Try to live one day at a time”......Ha!
How big is the space at the back of one’s mind
To store so many packages of sorrow?
What do they know of days and the grief that’s in every one of them;
And how many days do I need?
Let’s see.
There’s a day for my Mother,
A day for my father,
A day and a night for the boy that was me;


Perhaps just half days for those not dead but only lost to me:

And I grieve for all those who are crying in the night,
Behind the sparkling city lights,
Under the glittering desert stars.
Stand above any city at night,
And feel the sorrow flood upward to you,
Until the lights shift and swim in your watery eyes.
I grieve there, then, for the lonely,
For the unloved,
For the beaten, the hurt,
For those who see themselves as ugly,
For the lost,
For the bewildered,
For the disappointed
For the bombed, the burned, the blinded children,
For tribesmen coughing blood from their lungs into the dust:

I witness endless crucifixion and can only grieve...
Oh, my Lord, how I grieve and am never wrung dry.