A Poem for C.S. Lewis' Birthday

A Grief Observed, CS Lewis: Two Couplets with Quotes and a Poem In Between

(The quotes are in italics)

The walls of my logic, built of clear, certain light,

Have crumbled to ash in the first endless night.

My faith, once a fortress that stood firm and tall,

Now feels like a cold, empty house after the fall.

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like that of being afraid." 

She has been gone long enough now that memory is not a solace, but a new form of interrogation. I search for her image, her sharp wit, the sudden joy of her face, and find only that the chair is empty, that the silence is not merely quiet, but a distinct sound: the sound of no Joy.

They tell me time heals, but it only seems to peel away the layers of comfort I thought I had, leaving the raw nerve exposed. The world’s beauty is still here—the familiar hills, the fire in the grate— but she is not here to see it, and I am not here to share it. It makes the beauty itself feel like a cheat, a lie told to a desperate man.

And God? The Almighty Tactician. I find myself pounding on the door I spent a lifetime defining, only to find the handle cold, the latch drawn tight. Is this the test? The stripping away of everything I wrote. To stand naked, shivering on the edge of the abyss, and learn that the Answer is less a Person and more a Question mark? The doctrines I taught are fine for the healthy, but when the heart is wrung out like a dirty rag, the philosophy becomes dust. I seek only the fact of her.

"The most useful thing one can do is to say simply and faithfully, 'When I am in hell, I will look to find Him.'" 

I find that the pain, though cruel, is the last proof of grace,

A final, fierce honoring of her heart and her face.

Though shattered in the mirror,

The truth now is clear:

To love is to risk losing everything held dear.

#cslewis #poetry #AGriefObserved