It is the living who cannot

BY HILDA MORLEY
It is the living who cannot
live without the dead,
who wish them
back,
who need their presences,
their hands,
as Orpheus
held her hand, Eurydice’s,
to lead her
back to earth out of
the gulf of Hades,
as I
need yours
It is not so much
the dead
who need us
now
(as we think they do)
& that reconciliation
we long for, that knowledge
of each other to the uttermost,
which could assuage us,
they are
one step beyond it & suffer us
to long for them.
If they could
return, it would be out of
patience with us merely: their need to
console us. For somehow an indifference
possesses them, for all their tenderness
& they see beyond us,
even if
what they see seems to us
nothing

This is a poem I literally had to read twice before reflecting, unlike the others. I’m kind of confused

as to my reaction, to be honest. This had a very serious tone to it, yet something did stand out to me

very evidently.

Some of the lines are written spatially different. That is, there are lines that only have one or two

words and these words are placed either to the far left or far right of that line. In addition to the

actual content of the poem, this was the most thought provoking as to the positions of all the words.

It is surprising to me that many poets write this way and expect the reader to understand; on the

other hand it may be my incapability of comprehending a deeper meaning of a text.