Today

I love the “Ten Poems” series of books by Roger Housden.  In each Housden chooses 10 poems and presents a thoughtful commentary about each.  The one I am reading this morning is called: “Ten Poems to change your life, again and again.”
This morning I read  “Sonnets to Orpheus, Part Two, XII”  by Rainer Maria Rilke
 
“Want the change. Be inspired by the flame
where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
as the curve of the body as it turns away.
 
What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.
 
Pour yourself like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.
 
Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming a laurel,
dares you to become the wind.”
 
In his commentary Housden describes the end of a 6 year relationship and the reading of another poem:
 
 
The God Abandons Antony By: C.P. Cavafy

When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.
 
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
 
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
 
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who proved worthy of this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen—your final delectation—to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.
 
(https://dailypoetry.me/c-p-cavafy/god-abandons-antony/)

I have experienced the loss of two women, whom I loved,  in recent years. Lynn by sudden death and Linda by a death of compatibility. These two poems, pointed to by Housden, speak to having the honesty and courage to look squarely at our losses and remember all the wonderful qualities of life we were given by their being. 
 
This reminded me of the song by Leonard Cohen, “Alexandra Lost”.   (https://youtu.be/jbGsEV5yvns)
And so, when I started playing it, I started crying.   Overwhelmed by the joy and love each of these significant woman had given to my life.
Housden describes reading this poem to his wife of eight years as they separated.  I have changed this slightly into the statement as it would apply to Lynn and Linda:
 “I want them to know I could feel the richness of what I was losing, that I would not wish to diminish our lives together by suggesting each of them didn’t matter to me, that I would always recognize and praise the gifts they had brought into my life. (Roger Housden-Ten poems to change your life again and again.)
 
This feels poignant to me as I enter a new female relationship.  I know it will contain happiness and pain, as do all significant relationships.  I am choosing to say “yes” to it. To say “no” would be an insult to Mother Nature, who placed us together on my last flight from Hawaii, leaving my last relationship. 
 
As Rilke says:
 
What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.
 
Thank you life.
 
Jim