If the work of grieving is to remain
grief-stricken, and if grief’s absence
is worse than its pain, then she has no choice
but the one she chooses—to let the weight
of her dead child grow heavier, to let it
crush the spring’s new leaves and grasses,
the magnolia’s and cherry’s flowering.

And if, despite all our prayers to Help her,
O Lord, to lay down her burdens, she lifts up
her bundle of sadness and sorrow each day,
then let her be comforted by its weight
and the task of carrying it; and if one day,
nearly a year after her son has died,
there’s another occasion for bells,

though this time they chime for a wedding,
and the day, though rain was predicted,
has opened out into yellow and green dresses
winking in the sun and a whirling breeze
that blows open the blues and whites
of suits and shirts and makes kites of ties,
then let the day be joyous even for her.

And if, finally, the ritual complete,
she’s gathered among sisters and brothers
and someone tells a joke, then let there be
praise for that which achingly begins
somewhere deep inside her and spreads
like hunger until it must be fed, and she
laughs for the first time, quietly, then louder.

And even if she feels horrified now,
her laughter uncontrollable, ravenous,
let there be praise for the way its grip
is briefly stronger than the grip of death,
as if some god, seeing the hold of grief,
said, Let there be lively quivers of laughter,
kin to grief’s ululation of heaving sobs.

Robert Cording, Ph.D. ’77 is the Barrett Professor of English at the College of the Holy Cross. His most recent collection of poems, Common Life, was published in 2006.