Katy: I first heard Donald Hall read a poem from "Without" on the radio, while sitting at my desk at work one day. I went out that afternoon and bought the book, then rode the El home that night, weeping. "Without" sits on my shelf as one of those books I can't read, because if I don't, maybe it's not real. Maybe grief doesn't exist, maybe pain isn't our lot, maybe those we've lost are just standing outside a door somewhere, waiting to come back in. If anyone can capture beauty in such terrible pain, it's Donald Hall, and the poem below is a wonderful example of that.
Alone together a moment
on the twenty-second anniversary
of their wedding,
he clasped her as she stood
at the sink, pressing
into her backside, rubbing his cheek
against the stubble
of her skull. He gave her a ring
of pink tourmaline
with nine small diamonds around it.
She put it on her finger
and immediately named it Please Don't Die.
They kissed and Jane
whispered, "Timor mortis conturbat me."
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