Read Poems That Make Grown Men Cry for Free Online

her down for two years. I had not seen much of deathbefore that point, other
than a pair of legs under a crashed car on the M1, and the enormity of the change, the idea of saying good-bye forever, seemed for a while to engulf me. In the end, my mother’s departure was
peaceful and un-horrid, and there was a comfort in that, but I do recall that sense of disloyalty in the early months, when I would find myself laughing at a party and suddenlyremember that she
was gone and my poor father was alone, and Rossetti’s words did resonate with me, expressing, as they do, a feeling that my late and so-lamented parent would have thoroughly endorsed. As it
happens, I don’t know to whom the poem was originally addressed, but I suppose, in the end, great poetry, like great art, is not about anyone in particular because it is about everyone.

    Remember
    Remember me when I am gone away,
    Gone far away into the silent land;
    When you can no more hold me by the hand,
    Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
    Remember me when no more day by day
    You tell me of our future that you plann’d:
    Only remember me; you understand
    It will be late to counsel then or pray.
    Yet if you should forget me for a while
    And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
    For if the darkness and corruption leave
    A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
    Better by far you should forget and smile
    Than that you should remember and be sad.
    (1862)

    These thoughts of the veteran war reporter RobertFisk (b. 1946), Middle East correspondent for the London
Times
and
Independent
for more than
thirty years, are the closing words of his book
The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East
(2005).
    The writer, actor and director Julian Fellowes (b. Cairo, 1949) is best known as the creator of the award-winning TV series
Downton Abbey
and for his Oscar-winning
screenplayfor Robert Altman’s 2002 film
Gosford Park
. As well as appearing as an actor on TV and the West End stage, and in films such as
Tomorrow Never Dies
(1997), he has
published several novels and wrote the stage version of
Mary Poppins
(2004). He was created a life peer in 2011.

After Great Pain
    EMILY DICKISON (1830–1886)

    DOUGLAS KENNEDY
    In the United States we are in love with one of the more specious words in the modern lexicon: closure. This word is employed whenever the spectre of tragedy has cast its
shadow on a life. ‘I need to achieve closure’ is a common lament in the wake of a profound grief. Yet lurking behind thisproclamation is the equally spurious belief that the horrors
which life can wreak upon us – and which we can also wreak upon ourselves – can be eventually placed in a box, put on a shelf and shut away forever.
    Emily Dickinson’s masterpiece of a poem points up one of the reasons why her work so endures and so resonates with the modern consciousness. It speaks directly to the heart of thematter.
It doesn’t flinch in the face of human contradiction and the way we all try to negotiate the worst that life can throw at us. And within its diamondhard craftsmanship – its lyrical
economy, its imagistic precision – Dickinson not only speaks volumes about the shadowland of despair that is the price of being given the gift of life, but also reminds us of one of the
central truths withwhich we all grapple: to live is to harbour so many profound losses.
    After Great Pain
    After great pain a formal feeling comes –
    The Nerves sit ceremonious like Tombs;
    The stiff Heart questions – was it He that bore
    And Yesterday – or Centuries before?
     
    The Feet, mechanical, go round
    A Wooden way
    Of Ground, or Air,or Ought,
    Regardless grown,
    A Quartz contentment, like a stone.
     
    This is the Hour of Lead
    Remembered if outlived,
    As Freezing persons recollect the Snow –
    First Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go.
    (c. 1864)

    Douglas Kennedy (b. 1955) has published ten novels (translated into twenty-twolanguages), three of which,
The Dead