Consolatio

Eric Clapton: The terrible numbness that I lived in

When I try to take myself back to that time, to recall the terrible numbness that I lived in, I recoil in fear. I never want to go through anything like that again. Originally, these songs were never meant for publication or public consumption; they were just what I did to stop from going mad...

When it came out, it was the biggest-selling album of my entire career....But if you want to know what it actually cost me, go to Ripley, and visit the grave of my son.

     --Eric Clapton (1945- ), on the death of his 4-year-old son Conor. In March, 1991, Conor fell from a 53rd-story window in New York City. Vanity Fair, November 2007.

Graveyard in Ripley, Yorkshire

Tears in Heaven lyrics:

Would you know my name
If I saw you in heaven
Will it be the same
If I saw you in heaven
I must be strong, and carry on
Cause I know I don't belong
Here in heaven

Would you hold my hand
If I saw you in heaven
Would you help me stand
If I saw you in heaven
I'll find my way, through night and day
Cause I know I just can't stay
Here in heaven

Time can bring you down
Time can bend your knee
Time can break your heart
Have you begging please
Begging please

Beyond the door
There's peace I'm sure.
And I know there'll be no more...
Tears in heaven

Would you know my name
If I saw you in heaven
Will it be the same
If I saw you in heaven
I must be strong, and carry on
Cause I know I don't belong
Here in heaven

Cause I know I don't belong
Here in heaven

John Montague: Unmarked faces fierce with grief

Falls Funeral

Unmarked faces
fierce with grief

a line of children
led by a small coffin

the young
mourning the young

a sight beyond tears
beyond pious belief

David's brethren
in the Land of Goliath

      --John Montague (1929- ), in Contemporary Irish Poetry (1988). This poem refers to the Troubles, and Falls Road in West Belfast.

Derick Thomson: When I stood at his grave, I merely wanted home

Coffins

A tall thin man
with a short beard,
and a plane in his hand:
whenever I pass
a joiner's shop in the city,
and the scent of sawdust comes to my mind,
memories return of that place,
with the coffins,
the hammers and nails,
saws and chisels,
and my grandfather, bent,
planing shavings
from a thin, bare plank.

Before I knew what death was;
or had any notion, a glimmering
of the darkness, a whisper of the stillness.
And when I stood at his grave,
on a cold Spring day, not a thought
came to me of the coffins
he made for others:
I merely wanted home
where there would be talk, and tea, and warmth.

And in the other school also,
where the joiners of the mind were planing,
I never noticed the coffins,
though they were sitting all round me;
I did not recognise the English braid,
the Lowland varnish being applied to the wood,
I did not read the words on the brass,
I did not understand that my race was dying.
Until the cold wind of this Spring came
to plane the heart;
until I felt the nails piercing me,
and neither tea nor talk will heal the pain.

    --Derick Thomson (Ruaraidh MacThòmais) (1921- ), Scottish Gaelic poet. Translated by the poet; in Modern Scottish Gaelic Poems [Nua-Bhardachd Glaidhlic]. He is lamenting not only his grandfather but the Gaelic language and Highlands culture of his childhood in the Outer Hebrides, which is vanishing under the overwhelming cultural pressure of English. The death of their ancient culture is a major theme among modern writers in Irish and Scottish Gaelic.

When a language dies, a world dies.

Cisteachan-Laighe

Duin' àrd, tana
's fiasag bheag air,
's locair 'na làimh:
gach uair theid mi seachad
air bùth-shaoirsneachd sa' bhaile,
's a thig gu mo chuimhne faileadh na min-sàibh,
thig gu mo chuimhne cuimhne an àit ud,
le na cisteachan-laighe,
na h- ùird 's na tairgean,
na saibh 's na sgeilbean,
is mo sheanair crom,
is sliseag bho shliseag ga locradh
bho'n bhòrd thana lom.

Mus robh fhios agam dè bh' arm bàs;
beachd, bloigh fios, boillsgeadh
de'n dorchadas, fathann de'n t-sàmhchair.
'S nuair a sheas mi aig uaigh,
là fuar Earraich, cha dainig smuain
thugam air na cisteachan-laighe
a rinn esan do chàch:
'sann a bha mi 'g iarraidh dhachaidh,
far am biodh còmhradh, is tea, is blàths.

Is anns an sgoil eile cuideachd,
san robh saoir na h-inntinn a' locradh,
cha tug mi 'n aire do na cisteachan-laighe,
ged a bha iad 'nan suidhe mun cuairt orm;
cha do dh' aithnich mi 'm brèid Beurla,
an liomh Gallda bha dol air an fhiodh,
cha do leugh mi na facail air a' phràis,
cha do thuig mi gu robh mo chinneadh a' dol bàs.
Gus an dainig gaoth fhuar an Earraich-sa
a locradh a' chridhe;
gus na dh' fhairich mi na tairgean a' dol tromham,
's cha shlànaich tea no còmhradh an cràdh.

Mark Doty: Dogs show you why you might want to live

It isn't that one wants to live for the sake of a dog, exactly, but that dogs show you why you might want to.

        --Mark Doty (1953- ) in Dog Years

Proust: Pain faster than electricity

The force that goes around the world the most times in a second is not electricity but pain.

    --Marcel Proust (1871-1922), À la recherche du temps perdu (Albertine Disparue) p 79
Thanks to Evocations de La Recherche du temps perdu

La force qui fait le plus de fois le tour de la terre en une seconde, ce n'est pas l'électricité, c'est la douleur.

Baudelaire: The dark gulf where my heart has fallen

Out of the depths I cry

I beg for your pity, You, the only one I love,
from the bottom of the dark gulf where my heart has fallen.
It is a drab universe with a leaden horizon,
where horror and blasphemy swim in the night.

A sun without heat floats over six months,
and the six other months night covers the earth;
it is a country more naked than the polar land;
--no animals, nor streams, nor green, nor woods.

Now there is no horror in the world that's worse
than the cold cruelty of this icy sun
and this immense night resembling the Chaos of old,

I envy the lot of the lowest beasts
who can dive into a stupid sleep,
while the skein of time slowly unwinds!

      --Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), from Spleen

De profundis clamavi

J'implore ta pitié, Toi, l'unique que j'aime,
du fond du gouffre obscur où mon coeur est tombé.
C'est un univers morne à l'horizon plombé,
où nagent dans la nuit l'horreur et le blasphème;

un soleil sans chaleur plane au-dessus six mois,
et les six autres mois la nuit couvre la terre;
c'est un pays plus nu que la terre polaire;
--ni bêtes, ni ruisseaux, ni verdure, ni bois.

Or il n'est pas d'horreur au monde qui surpasse
la froide cruauté de ce soleil de glace
et cette immense nuit semblable au vieux Chaos;

je jalouse le sort des plus vils animaux
qui peuvent se plonger dans un sommeil stupide,
tant l'écheveau du temps lentement se dévide!

Socrates, according to Plato: To fear death is to think one knows what one does not

To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not be the greatest blessing for a man, men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils. And surely it is the most blameworthy ignorance to believe that one knows what one does not know.

       --Socrates (469-399 B.C.), quoted by Plato in the Apology, translated by G.M.A. Grube. From Plato, Complete Works (1997)

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: The dead more present and more powerful than the living

The dead, if one venerates their memory, are more present and more powerful than the living.

        --Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944), Citadelle, translated into English as Wisdom of the Sands

Le disparu si l'on vénère sa mémoire est plus présent et plus puissant que le vivant.   

Buddha: A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky

This existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds.
To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance.
A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky,
rushing by, like a torrent down a steep mountain.

            --Gautama Buddha

If anyone knows the translator and source of this quotation, please email me.

It seems to be from: Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche; “The Last Teaching of the Buddha,” in The Teaching of the Buddha, 128th revised edition (Tokyo: Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai, 1986)

Venetian proverbs: The dead open the eyes of the living

The dead open the eyes of the living.
I morti verze i oci ai vivi.

Pain comes on horseback, but goes away on foot.
El mal vien a cavalo, e po' el va via a piè.

Pain does not ask permission.
El mal no domanda permesso.