13 October 2004

"...to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier." --Whitman, from "Song of Myself"
I have reread the entirety of the 1891-2 version of the "Song" from *Leaves of Grass*, and what an extraordinary poem it is; despite occasional longeurs, how it seems to include everything, even to anticipate all objections to itself. Of course my eye lit on this phrase. Can the good gray poet possibly have been right? Such states of ecstatic access, such affirming certainties, a confidence so supreme that it is supreme even in its generosities--it is scarcely possible for any human being to cling to such states long, except at the moment of poetic creation.
At times like this, it is hard not to feel that the nineteenth century, with its prescribed forms of mourning, had something to show us. We tacitly expect that the survivors will move on, move back into their lives, in a few weeks. I remember that FSG was careful to wear black for many months after his elder sister died; he can scarcely have imagined that I would now wear his black neckties to mourn for him. There were scarcely forms for divorced spouses; there were certainly no forms for divorced spouses of the same gender. A widow was to wear full mourning for a year; a brother was to wear full mourning for three months, and half-mourning thereafter. As something less than a widow or widower, and perhaps more than a brother, I say: full mourning for six months.