Not the loss alone, by Gregory Orr

Antonio Vivaldi - Concerto No. 4 in F minor, Op. 8, RV 297, "L'inverno" (Winter)
Part II. Largo

Not the loss alone,
But what comes after.
If it ended completely
At loss, the rest
Wouldn't matter.

But you go on.
And the world also.

And words, words
In a poem or song:
Aren't they a stream
On which your feelings float?

Aren't they also
The banks of that stream
And you yourself the flowing?


poem from Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved
Copper Canyon Press, 2013

I love the dark hours, by Ranier Maria Rilke

 
Franz Schubert - "An den Mond", op. 57 No.3, D 193 
with Rita Streich, voice and Erik Werba, piano 

I love the dark hours of my being.
My mind deepens into them.
There I can find, as in old letters,
the days of my life, already lived,
and held like a legend, and understood.

Then the knowing comes: I can open
to another life that's wide and timeless.

So I am sometimes like a tree
rustling over a gravesite
and making real the dream
of the one its living roots embrace:

a dream once lost
among sorrows and songs.


from Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God 
translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy