The Perfect Poem as a Response to One of My Posts

I posted about a typical day in the life the other day -- the kind of day that calls up my prodigious sense of balance but that also calls for my prodigiously sharp tongue. I wrote in teensy tinesy letters that certain sayings -- those well-meant but maddeningly cliched phrases -- do not help me to balance further. I think I also added that those who use them are either insane or brain-addled. And as things go, it was that teensy-tinesy sentence that provoked the most comments. 


One of the responses included a poem forwarded by one of my very favorite blog friends, and while I'm a nerdy lover of George Herbert's poetry, I had never read this one. Mr. Herbert was a great metaphysical poet of the 17th century -- when I first read his poem The Collar in a college poetry class, I nearly swooned (had to use that word). You can read it at the end of this post from a couple of years ago. 


The poem sent to me today is from Herbert's larger work The Temple. Sacred Poems, and private ejaculations, published in 1633. Reader, you couldn't ask for a more fantastic title for a book of poetry, could you?


How terrific is this alongside my vastly less eloquent and far more petulant ejaculations?


Bitter-sweet

AH my deare angrie Lord,
Since thou dost love, yet strike;
Cast down, yet help afford;
Sure I will do the like.
   
I will complain, yet praise;
I will bewail, approve:
And all my sowre-sweet dayes
I will lament, and love.

Dear Emily,

Emily Dickinson's manuscript of "A route of evanescence"

Why is it that I can pick up a volume of your poetry on any day, at any moment and read the perfect words? Late last night, I opened my Shambhala The Pocket EMILY DICKINSON  to this:

That first Day's Night had come -
And grateful that a thing
So terrible - had been endured -
I told my Soul to sing -


She said her Strings were snapt -
Her Bow - to Atoms blown -
And so to mend her - gave me work
Until another Morn -


And then - a Day as huge
As Yesterdays in pairs,
Unrolled its horror in my face -
Until it blocked my eyes -


My Brain - begun to laugh -
I mumbled - like a fool -
And tho' tis Years ago - that Day -
My Brain keeps giggling - still.


And Something's odd - within -
That person that I was -
And this One - do not feel the same -
Could it be Madness - this?

(c.1862)

With most of your poetry, my initial reading is one of recognition. I suck in my breath. I understand. But then my eye, a lens, is humidified, clouds over and blurs. You recede, pulling, your words like a thread I can't keep hold of.

Reverently,
Elizabeth