I say your name …

For a long time after Sophia’s death, I could not write. Profound grief demands an endurance that seems to occupy all space. Last year, however, the process of working on Sophie’s website made it possible to begin to write again, and to write poetry. I have begun a collection of poems dedicated to Sophia (of which 33 have been written so far). This is how it begins; here is the first:

“And when he had compounded it all, he divided the mixture into a number of souls

equal to the number of stars and assigned each soul to a star.”

                                                                                                Plato: The Timaeus

Tomorrow the world

Will begin again without you.

The comfortable sun, appointed to arrive,

Will shine for others, the sleeping host

Of metronomic lives.

 

The streets are silent,

This world is theirs.

 

In the darkness, I say your name

I say your name

 

Only the one true star

That tracks its path across my sky

Answers me,

Its pulse a heartbeat

That says, “I’m here, I’m here”