I Wake And Feel The Fell of Dark, Not Day - November 2010

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hoürs we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

Gerard Manley Hopkins


This is my companion poem. Each morning I wake to the dark. What shocks me most is all that one is able to keep at a distance, at a "third remove" so as not to simply disintegrate. But there is such a price to pay for simple functionality. This "dark night of the soul" poem is one of Hopkins "terrible sonnets". There are two others that also breathe out the darkness within. They are my companions.

I memorized all three when I was in 10th grade, in Mrs. Hoyt's english class at Mounds View High School. We had to choose from among a group of poems for a writing project. "God's Grandeur" by Hopkins was among them. I remember the moment of reading it and the warmth of sudden illumination that spread within me, - a completely physical feeling. There is a joy that bubbles up from within when you find something that you, mysteriously, without knowing how or why, understand. I think that for some it can be found in a mathematical equation, a scientific proposition, or a logical puzzle. For me it is engendered by words put together in certain ways, the arrangement of certain sounds, and by movements following movements. Poetry, music and dance. It is the joy of comprehension, or maybe it is better to say apprehension. "Beauty is that, the apprehension of which, pleases." But it is not just that which is apprehended which pleases, it is the apprehension itself. The core of this experience is in the connections which are made. Through such experience we are able to feel "whole" within ourselves. "Whole" within by connecting with something completely "other." Again, 'only connect.'

And this is why these "terrible sonnets" draw me back, again and again. They are about the agony we feel when we cannot connect. There is a kind of disintegration internally and we are left alone, isolated in the prison of ourselves. My cries, my 'dead letters' are sent to Hunter, "who lives, alas, away." This is not heresy. I do not deify Hunter. Hopkins understood it best. He writes in "As Kingfishers Catch Fire"

... Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces

And Christ played in Hunter's features, lovely in limb, and oh, so beautiful, so astonishingly beautiful in his eyes. And this will be for all the hours, days and years to come... this terrible longing, for Hunter. For that particular, that exact set of patterns, that was Hunter. What Hopkins would call his "quidditas", his 'thisness' or 'whatness'. Again from "As Kingfishers Catch fire"

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves - goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying "What I do is me: for that I came."

And children struggle to become themselves. We all do, or if we don't, then we (and those around us) pay a horrible price for it. For the year before he died Hunter was struggling visibly with becoming himself. He waged a battle with anger, something that he had only rarely expressed before. He and Ramsay fought a great deal, and when Hunter would be in conflict with Ken, he would rage and swear and fight. There were morning battles before school where Hunter would wake up angry and would kick and shout and throw things, and when Ken would try to hold onto him, just to keep him from destroying things, Hunter would wiggle and squirm and fight, and no one, NO ONE, could have held on to him. And there was nothing that could stop him, no threat of punishment ("go ahead - I don't care"), no mode of reasoning. Nothing. Twice, when we were trying to simply keep him from destroying things, he called 911, to tell them we were hurting him. The worst thing about it was to see the storm raging in him, and not know how to calm him.

He was always so loving and tender after, almost flippant about what had happened (but really, he was embarrassed), refusing to talk about it, but showering us with sweetness to make up for it. But in November a year ago, he was raging at Molly while we were driving somewhere, and she began to cry. For all their years together, they almost never fought. They were so EASY together, so complimentary. And though Hunter could be moody and tough on Connor and Ramsay, he was almost never so with Molly. The day after Molly cried in the car, Hunter came to me and said "Mom, you know how you were talking about getting me a counselor to help me with my anger? Well, I want to go see someone now." I was surprised. He had refused any such help before. And he offered me the reason now. "I made Molly cry yesterday. I never ever want to make Molly cry again."

Hunter was learning to master himself, so as to become himself. And in his leaving us, has given us the reason for lifelong heartsoreness. So again, to Hopkins. "I am gall, I am heartburn" The bitter taste of loss. God's most deep decree? Having eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil... 'you will surely die'. It is our embodiment that is both our joy and our deepest pain. What a strange endeavor... to join spirit with flesh. No wonder we are such mysteries to ourselves. "Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse, selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours." Being embodied seems like a handicap to the spirit. Not least of all because of the joys of incorporation. This is the great challenge, to master ourselves by reconciling spirit and body to each other. And now, I am like an infant all over again, helpless to comprehend the loss of Hunter. Celine wrote in 'Journey to the End of the Night': "perhaps that is what one is looking for, that and nothing more, - to feel the greatest pain there is to feel, so as to know oneself completely before death." Then I know myself. I am a helpless infant.

One thing that Hopkins spells out so clearly is that belief (faith, hope, whatever you will) does not give the believer any respite from pain. No one is immune from what is common to us all. And it hurts just as bad whatever your beliefs. When the doctor came to where I sat, a few feet from where Hunter lay, he knelt and spoke "we have done everything that can be done and it hasn't worked". I said "there must be something else to do". He said "There is nothing else to do." I said "Are you telling me that Hunter is dying?" He nodded, and it came to me suddenly "Are you telling me that Hunter is dead?"

When I could, I said "I made a bargain with God, do anything to me, but keep them safe" - an impossible bargain, I know. And all the nurses responded immediately, as if in chorus, "We all make that bargain with God". There it is. Jacob wrestled the Angel. So do we all.