One of the good fortunes of my time at the Claremont School of Theology and living for years afterward in the vicinity of the Claremont Colleges was how many opportunities I had to hear great poets read their poetry. I heard W.S. Merwin, Robert Haas, Robert Pinski, Jane Hirschfield, Li-Young Lee, Mark Doty, Coleman Barks, Jorie Graham, and Naomi Shihab Nye to name just some. One poet I was introduced to there and whose works I have become more familiar with since is the American poet Edward Hirsch. In addition to his own poetry, Hirsch—one of the great advocates for poetry—has written a very good, accessible book titled HOW TO READ A POEM And fall in Love with Poetry.

Today’s Life-Line is from Edward Hirsh’s book Gabriel: A Poem about the short life, the sudden death, the excruciating grief of losing his dear son, and his subsequent mourning. The Life-Line is just one three-line stanza from a poem in this collection. The entire poem is posted below. I have also included a video of Hirsch reading the poem below and for those poetry devotees, curious novices, and folks touched by grief or interested in the topic, there are two short interviews of Ed Hirsch that also include him reading a few other poems.

Look closely and you will see
Almost everyone carrying bags
Of cement on their shoulders

“Never has there been a book of poems quite like Gabriel, in which a short life, a bewildering death, and the unanswerable sorrow of a father come together in such a sustained elegy. This unabashed sequence speaks directly from Hirsch’s heart to our own, without sentimentality. From its opening lines—“The funeral director opened the coffin / And there he was alone / From the waist up”—Hirsch’s account is poignantly direct and open to the strange vicissitudes and tricks of grief.”
~ from the publisher Knopf

from Gabriel: A Poem

I did not know the work of mourning
Is like carrying a bag of cement
Up a mountain at night

The mountaintop is not in sight
Because there is no mountaintop
Poor Sisyphus grief

I did not know I would struggle
Through a ragged underbrush
Without an upward path

Because there is no path
There is only a blunt rock
With a river to fall into

And Time with its medieval chambers
Time with its jagged edges
And blunt instruments

I did not know the work of mourning
Is a labor in the dark
We carry inside ourselves

Though sometimes when I sleep
I am with him again
And then I wake

Poor Sisyphus grief
I am not ready for your heaviness
Cemented to my body

Look closely and you will see
Almost everyone carrying bags
Of cement on their shoulders

That’s why it takes courage
To get out of bed in the morning
And climb into the day

Ed Hirsch reading the poem above:

Ed Hirsch talks about his book Gabriel: A Poem

Ed Hirsch discusses his book How to Read a Poem, his very personal book Gabriel: A Poem, his son, a father’s loss and grief, and the state of poetry today. He also reads a few more poems.

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