In retrospect, it looks the third Reich directly in the eye and robs it of its power. They’re radical – a twist, almost subverting the aesthetic. The last four words of the poem stand proud of everything that precedes them in the other twelve lines and are utterly rebellious. Indeed, reading it puts me in mind of the more organic beliefs of ancient animism the birds, the weather, the plants. Suffice to say that this poem – that acknowledges that life will be taken – is purposefully transcendent but religiously ambiguous. We know little about Mary – I don’t know whether or not she had faith but shan’t put my own bias on her. It was composed at a time when the world was on the threshold of being debilitated by one of its darkest convulsions.Īnother appeal is that the words remain neutral with regards to religion. Knowing the circumstances under which the poem was conceived makes it even more poignant: In 1932, a Jewish girl staying with her family – Margaret Schwarzkopf – couldn’t return to Germany to see her own dying mother as rampant nationalism and antisemitism was gripping Europe. Her words incise because the feeling behind them is genuine. Mary’s contribution, though amateur, is their equal. Mary didn’t have the privilege or tutorage of a world-class Cambridge education like W.H Auden (who wrote “Stop all the clocks”), and she never honed her skills by working as a journalist like Dylan Thomas (“Do not go gentle into that good night”). We could compare it to the work of two of her twentieth century contemporaries: Auden and Thomas. “Do not stand at my grave and weep” is one of the most famous pieces written about death. That sentence sounds so condescending but I’m typing it with the wonder of something so arresting being achieved by someone who wasn’t trained in the art she is famed for. She lived in Baltimore working as a florist. Mary Elizabeth Frye was an American born in 1905. How else should I explain it? A stealth arrow shot into your core that bursts into flames once the words start taking affect. True prose and poetry are akin to vinegar cutting through fat.
#DO NOT STAND AT MY GRAVE AND WEEP PROFESSIONAL#
Why does it succeed where more professional verse fails? Because of the strict rhyme, each other line could pretty much be guessed by the reader. The refrains are of the paint by numbers variety. In fact, there is but a meniscus separating these visual flights from cliché. If this poem rested simply on its imagery, it would end up little more than an algorithm. The ripened grain is mentioned in standard English – not via the hands of Ninkasi, Demeter or Neper.Īll of the imagery is basic – it’s the fodder of murals painted along primary school corridors. By this I mean there are no literary references. The scansion in some of the lines could be improved, the channel eased. The artist hasn’t paused to administer each glint of light from the bristles’ point, but gone in roughshod with sweeping brush strokes. The poem is amateur and all the better for it. We shared a moment clasped in the same grip – dementia or not, it had levelled us. In the room we were in, the still that followed the reading was a pregnant aftermath. The muscles that contort eye shape prior to weeping tensed. The woman’s eyes bulged as the last two lines were read out.
I run it here without any as the rhythm waives the need for it in any case.) (there are versions online with tiny differences in grammar. Presently, the social worker hit upon the following poem: This can often work with people with dementia – it seems to connect to a different part of the brain.
There was someone else in the flat: the lady’s social worker who was trying to establish a bond by quoting popular rhymes and songs to her. She was like a woman catching glimpses of herself in a mirror and seeing an imposter increasingly take her place. She would parrot sentences, become horrified of herself for doing so, apologise and then continue repeating them afresh. She was in the cruel position shared by thousands: bearing witness to the illness consuming her, but simultaneously losing ground to it. This was because she had started wandering and getting collected by Police during the small hours. The triggers were there to monitor when she got up in the middle of the night, and track her movements around the building and if she left it. I was installing sensor equipment in an elderly woman’s flat close to Marble Arch. When I first encountered the work of Mary Elizabeth Frye, I was at work in central London.
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