Absent Friends 2025

 I post this poem every New Year's Eve.  But this year, it means more.

   

On this night of New Year's Eve,

I do much very much believe

that we should try to make amends

and call to mind our absent friends.

A year has past and all the while

they stood with us in times of trial

and joy for what fortune sends

even though they be absent friends.

Yet pulled and torn from one another,

though loved as dear as sister, brother.

The bonds we make, life often rends,

and fills our lives with absent friends.

But friends, though distant, are always near

they live in minds and hearts most dear

in deeper ways than man comprehends

So raise a glass to our absent friends.

-WL GRAYSON

Absent Friends (repost)

   

On this night of New Year's Eve,

I do much very much believe

that we should try to make amends

and call to mind our absent friends.

A year has past and all the while

they stood with us in times of trial

and joy for what fortune sends

even though they be absent friends.

Yet pulled and torn from one another,

though loved as dear as sister, brother.

The bonds we make, life often rends,

and fills our lives with absent friends.

But friends, though distant, are always near

they live in minds and hearts most dear

in deeper ways than man comprehends

So raise a glass to our absent friends.

-WL GRAYSON

Absent Friends (repost)

  

On this night of New Year's Eve,

I do much very much believe

that we should try to make amends

and call to mind our absent friends.

A year has past and all the while

they stood with us in times of trial

and joy for what fortune sends

even though they be absent friends.

Yet pulled and torn from one another,

though loved as dear as sister, brother.

The bonds we make, life often rends,

and fills our lives with absent friends.

But friends, though distant, are always near

they live in minds and hearts most dear

in deeper ways than man comprehends

So raise a glass to our absent friends.

-WL GRAYSON

Absent Friends (repost)

 

On this night of New Year's Eve,

I do much very much believe

that we should try to make amends

and call to mind our absent friends.

A year has past and all the while

they stood with us in times of trial

and joy for what fortune sends

even though they be absent friends.

Yet pulled and torn from one another,

though loved as dear as sister, brother.

The bonds we make, life often rends,

and fills our lives with absent friends.

But friends, though distant, are always near

they live in minds and hearts most dear

in deeper ways than man comprehends

So raise a glass to our absent friends.

-WL GRAYSON

20th Anniversary Sonnet

The time we met, like yesterday, and yet

So many years did fall like Autumn leaves

In late November, colored like sunset,

My heart is filled with joy and yet it grieves.

Too fast, too fast!  Tomorrow comes to fast!

And yesterday becomes a distant dream.

I try to hold these moments of the past!

They slip away and down time’s lonely stream.

“But don’t despair!” I tell my heart.  For love

Cannot be lost!  The cosmic spheres with all

Their vast expanse, that stretch from heav’n above,

To love’s eternal glory, short they fall.

And time is but a temporary thing

Your love ascends beyond time’s bitter sting

Mother's Day 2018

You were there on the first day of my life,
I danced with you when I married my wife.
You chauffered this child all over town
and held me so close when I would feel down.
You tripped on the stairs when I left a mess.
You wiped off each tear, each sneeze you would bless.

But when you left dad, I felt so alone.
I wish you had stayed until I was all grown.
Each night you would miss me drown in my tears
I grew old, but not up, adding my years.
I needed you mom, so my heart would not crack.
Time that we lost we will never get back.

Despite all of this, if I had to choose
I'd pick you as my mom, knowing I'd lose
so much when you left.  You were my one:
Imperfect mom of an imperfect son.
In the time we had left, I'm glad we forgave
each other and took our love to your grave.

Gone once again, let's forget all mistakes
I'm glad even now that my heart still breaks.

Absent Friends (repost)

On this night of New Year's Eve,

I do much very much believe

that we should try to make amends

and call to mind our absent friends.

A year has past and all the while

they stood with us in times of trial

and joy for what fortune sends

even though they be absent friends.

Yet pulled and torn from one another,

though loved as dear as sister, brother.

The bonds we make, life often rends,

and fills our lives with absent friends.

But friends, though distant, are always near

they live in minds and hearts most dear

in deeper ways than man comprehends

So raise a glass to our absent friends.

-WL GRAYSON

Absent Friends (repost)

On this night of New Year's Eve,
I do much very much believe
that we should try to make amends
and call to mind our absent friends.

A year has past and all the while
they stood with us in times of trial
and joy for what fortune sends
even though they be absent friends.

Yet pulled and torn from one another,
though loved as dear as sister, brother.
The bonds we make, life often rends,
and fills our lives with absent friends.

But friends, though distant, are always near
they live in minds and hearts most dear
in deeper ways than man comprehends
So raise a glass to our absent friends.

-WL GRAYSON

Absent Friends

(a repost from 2012)

On this night of New Year's Eve,
I do much very much believe
that we should try to make amends
and call to mind our absent friends.

A year has past and all the while
they stood with us in times of trial
and joy for what fortune sends
even though they be absent friends.

Yet pulled and torn from one another,
though loved as dear as sister, brother.
The bonds we make, life often rends,
and fills our lives with absent friends.

But friends, though distant, are always near
they live in minds and hearts most dear
in deeper ways than man comprehends
So raise a glass to our absent friends.

-WL GRAYSON

Monday Poetry: Ephemera

I recently read a paper that a friend of mine wrote on two poems by Yeats.  This was the first.  It is a warning that young love, supplied and fueled only by the passions, will wither and die.  Something more is needed.

I love the sadly beautiful imagery of the lovers by the lake and the doomed naiveté of the narrator.

Ephemera

'Your eyes that once were never weary of mine
Are bowed in sorrow under pendulous lids,
Because our love is waning.'

And then she:
'Although our love is waning, let us stand
By the long border of the lake once more,
Together in that hour of gentleness
When the poor tired child, Passion, falls asleep:
How far away the stars seem, and how far
Is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart!'

Pensive they paced along the faded leaves,
While slowly he whose hand held hers replied:
'Passion has often worn our wandering hearts.'

The woods were round them, and the yellow leaves
Fell like faint meteors in the gloom, and once
A rabbit old and lame limped down the path;
Autumn was over him: and now they stood
On the lone border of the lake once more:
Turning, he saw that she had thrust dead leaves
Gathered in silence, dewy as her eyes,
In bosom and hair.

'Ah, do not mourn,' he said,
'That we are tired, for other loves await us;
Hate on and love through unrepining hours.
Before us lies eternity; our souls
Are love, and a continual farewell.

Monday Poetry: Shakespearean Sonnet #18

I know I am skipping ahead.  My original intention was to go through each of Shakespeare's sonnets in a row.  But sonnets 1-17 are all about trying convince a young man to procreate.  I don't know about you, but 17 sonnets on that subject are a bit much.

He could have convinced me in 12.

Anyway, flash forward to Sonnet #18.  It is one of the most famous.  And it is a notable shift from the previous ones.  In all the preceding sonnets, Shakespeare tries to convince the subject that age and death will destroy his beauty.  This one points to a beauty that death cannot touch.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
   So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Monday Poetry: Shakespearean Sonnet #4

Shakespeare appears to be very concerned with procreation.  Once again, the subject of the poem is told that their beauty is not for themselves alone, but for the world.  It is a gift to be shared, primarily through having children.

Maybe this preoccupation with generation comes from Shakespeare's own experience of having kids.  I am wildly speculating, but wouldn't it be wonderful if he saw in his children more beauty than anything he could create with pen and paper?

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thy self thy beauty's legacy?
Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,
And being frank she lends to those are free:
Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse
The bounteous largess given thee to give?
Profitless usurer, why dost thou use
So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?
For having traffic with thy self alone,
Thou of thy self thy sweet self dost deceive:
Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,
What acceptable audit canst thou leave?
   Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,
   Which, used, lives th' executor to be.

Monday Poetry: Shakespearean Sonnet #3

Shakespeare seems very much preoccupied with procreation.  He keeps trying to get the reader of his sonnets to have children.  Here, he talks about how mirrors reflect beauty accurately, but children reflect the parent's beauty better.

Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another;
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
For where is she so fair whose uneared womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
Of his self-love, to stop posterity? 
Thou art thy mother's glass and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime;
So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.
   But if thou live, remembered not to be,
   Die single and thine image dies with thee.

Monday Poetry: Shakespearean Sonnet #2

Like the first sonnet, this one also urges haste in procreation.  This makes me think of all of those commercials for contraceptives that show all of the pleasures you can enjoy by not having kids.  It is amazing when speaking to teenagers about how one day most of them will be parents I receive blank stares of incomprehension back.  The idea of being a parent is so alien to them, even as they imagine themselves as adults (for children tend to imagine adulthood as childhood, but with more freedom).

But the poet, speaking from experience I think, explains that there are deeper and higher beauties that having children brings.

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery so gazed on now,
Will be a totter'd weed of small worth held: 
Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days; 
To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserv'd thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
   This were to be new made when thou art old,
   And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

The Return of Monday Poetry: Shakespearean Sonnet #1

I know I've been lax in posting Monday Poetry.  But I decided to bring this feature back by bringing the sonnets of William Shakespeare each week.

This first poem is a bit obtuse.  But it is his reflection on how beautiful things and beautiful people have  an obligation to make more beautiful people and beautiful things.  That is because age and death draw us down into darkness, so we have to fill the world with beauty while we can.

SONNET #1

From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding:
   Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
   To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

Monday Poetry: An Easter Carol

Since we are still in the Easter Season, I thought this would be appropriate:

An Easter Carol by Christina G. Rossetti

                Spring bursts to-day, 
For Christ is risen and all the earth's at play. 

                Flash forth, thou Sun, 
The rain is over and gone, its work is done. 

                Winter is past, 
Sweet Spring is come at last, is come at last. 

                Bud, Fig and Vine, 
Bud, Olive, fat with fruit and oil and wine. 

                Break forth this morn 
In roses, thou but yesterday a Thorn. 

                Uplift thy head, 
O pure white Lily through the Winter dead. 

                Beside your dams 
Leap and rejoice, you merry-making Lambs. 

                All Herds and Flocks 
Rejoice, all Beasts of thickets and of rocks. 

                Sing, Creatures, sing, 
Angels and Men and Birds and everything. 

                All notes of Doves 
Fill all our world: this is the time of loves.

Monday Poetry: The Roman Triptych II.3

 Judgment
In the Sistine the artist painted the Judgment.
The Judgment dominates the whole interior.
Here, the invisible End becomes poignant visibility.
This End is also the summit of transparency—such is the path of all generations.
Non omnis moriar.
What is imperishable in me
now stands face to face with Him Who Is!
This is what fills the central wall of the Sistine profusion of colour.
Do you remember, Adam? At the beginning he asked you "where are you?".
And you replied: "I hid myself from You because I was naked".
"Who told you that you were naked?"….
"The woman whom you put here with me" gave me the fruit....
All those who populate the central wall of the Sistine painting
bear in themselves the heritage of that reply of yours!
Of that question and that response!
Such is the End of your path.

Monday Poetry: Roman Triptych II.2

Here is the next installment of JP2's poetic reflection on the Sistine Chapel



2. Image and likeness
"God created man in his image,
male and female he created them
and God saw that it was very good.
Naked they were and did not feel shame".
Was it possible?
Do not ask those who are contemporary, but ask Michelangelo
(and perhaps the contemporaries as well!?).
Ask the Sistine.
How much is said here, on these walls!
The beginning is invisible. Everything here points to it.
All this abundant visibility, released by human genius.
And the End too is invisible,
though here, traveller, your eyes are caught
by the vision of the Last Judgment.
How make the invisible visible,
how penetrate beyond the bounds of good and evil?
The Beginning and the End, invisible, pierce us from these walls. 

Monday Poetry: Roman Triptych II.1

This next part of John Paul the Greats poem is a meditation on the painting of the Book of Genesis that is at the front of the Sistine Chapel:


1. The first beholder
"In him we live and move and have our being", says Paul at the Areopagus in Athens—
Who is He?
He is like an ineffable space which embraces all.
He, the Creator,
embraces everything, summoning to
existence from nothing, not only from
the beginning, but always.
Everything endures continually becoming—
"In the beginning was the Word, and through Him all things were made".
The mystery of the beginning is born together with the Word and is revealed through the Word.
The Word—eternal vision and utterance.
He, who was creating, saw—"saw that it was good",
his seeing different from ours.
He—the first Beholder—
saw, finding in everything some trace
of his Being, his own fullness—
He saw: Omnia nuda et aperta sunt ante oculos Eius—
Naked, transparent,
true, good and beautiful—
He saw in terms so different from ours.
Eternal vision and eternal utterance:
"In the beginning was the Word, and through Him all things were made",
all in which we live and move and have our being—
The Word, the marvellous eternal Word, as an invisible threshold
of all that has come into being, exists or will exist. As if the Word were the threshold.
The threshold of the Word, containing the invisible form of everything, divine and eternal —beyond this threshold everything begins to happen!
I stand at the entrance to the Sistine—
Perhaps all this could be said more simply
in the language of the "Book of Genesis".
But the Book awaits the image—
And rightly so. It was waiting for its Michelangelo.
The One who created "saw"—saw that "it was good".
"He saw", and so the Book awaited the fruit of "vision".
O all you who see, come—
I am calling you, all "beholders" in every age.
I am calling you, Michelangelo!
There is in the Vatican a chapel that awaits the harvest of your vision!
The vision awaited the image.
From when the Word became flesh, the vision is waiting.
We are standing at the threshold of the Book.

It is the Book of the origins—Genesis.
Here, in this chapel, Michelangelo penned it,
not with words, but with the richness
of piled-up colours.

We enter in order to read it again,
going from wonder to wonder.
So then, it is here—we look and recognize
the Beginning which emerged out of nothingness,
obedient to the creative Word.
Here it speaks from these walls.
But still more powerfully the End speaks.
Yes, the judgment is even more outspoken:
the judgment, the Final one.
This is the path that all must follow—
every one of us.

Monday Poetry: THE ROMAN TRIPTYCH: I. The Stream - 2. The source

Here is the continuation of John Paul the Great's poem: The Roman Triptych.  Here he meditates from the stream itself to its source.


2. The source
The undulating wood slopes down
to the rhythm of mountain streams....
If you want to find the source,
you have to go up, against the current,
tear through, seek, don't give up,
you know it must be somewhere here.
Where are you, source? Where are you, source?!
Silence....
Stream, stream in the wood,
tell me the secret of your beginning!
(Silence—why are you silent?
How carefully you have hidden the secret of your beginning).
Allow me to wet my lips
in spring water,
to feel its freshness,
reviving freshness.