Poetry + Art First Aid

Mark Rothko, Orange and Yellow 1 from here.

Yesterday I tried all kinds of things to quell the weeping, and this was the only one that really worked - to memorise one of my favorite poems:

WARNING TO CHILDREN, by Robert Graves

Children, if you dare to think
Of the greatness, rareness, muchness
Fewness of this precious only
Endless world in which you say
You live, you think of things like this:
Blocks of slate enclosing dappled
Red and green, enclosing tawny
Yellow nets, enclosing white
And black acres of dominoes,

Where a neat brown paper parcel
Tempts you to untie the string.
In the parcel a small island,
On the island a large tree,
On the tree a husky fruit.
Strip the husk and cut the rind off;
In the centre you will see
Blocks of slate enclosed by dappled
Red and green, enclosed by tawny
Yellow nets, enclosed by white
And black acres of dominoes,

Where the same brown paper parcel -
Children, leave the string untied!
For who dares undo the parcel
Finds himself at once inside it,
On the island, in the fruit,
Blocks of slate about his head,
Finds himself enclosed by dappled
Green and red, enclosed by yellow
Tawny nets enclosed by black
And white acres of dominoes,

But the same brown paper parcel
Still untied upon his knee,
And, if he then should dare to think
Of the fewness, muchness, rareness,
Greatness of this endless only
Precious world in which he says
He lives - he then unties the string.

It has provided comfort before, but there is something about being able to recite it in my head whenever things get too much that gives a settling feeling. I haven't yet memorised the whole thing - just the first two stanzas, but even that gives a little sense of completion.

I think I understand a link now between our loss and this terrible sense of being unable to follow anything through - it is as though my hope mechanism, my ability to imagine completing something, has been damaged. To take the hard small steps to get there, I need to be able to imagine getting there. And I'm hesitant to do that because all that we imagined for Haloumi was lost in a silly moment. I need a little splint for my broken hope bone, a poultice to lay upon it. And time for the bone to knit.