“For Grief” by John O’Donohue

Credit: Wallace Silva

When you lose someone you love,
Your life becomes strange,
The ground beneath you becomes fragile,
Your thoughts make your eyes unsure;
And some dead echo drags your voice down
Where words have no confidence
Your heart has grown heavy with loss;
And though this loss has wounded others too,
No one knows what has been taken from you
When the silence of absence deepens.

In “For Grief,” Irish poet John O’Donohue explores the disorienting manner in which the landscape shifts and changes after someone dies. His use of the second person makes readers feel as though they’re being addressed directly; their experience welcomed in all of its raw, unique vulnerability. While the poem begins by addressing someone lost, bereft and uncertain, it moves on to acknowledge the many conflicting emotions that can surface in the wake of grief, from guilt to self-doubt.

There are days when you wake up happy;
Again inside the fullness of life,
Until the moment breaks
And you are thrown back
Onto the black tide of loss.

Many of the verses offer unique metaphors for grief, describing it as a rope, as work, or as something waiting in ambush. Yet while O’Donohue doesn’t shy away from difficult feelings, his spiritual approach offers the possiility of presence amidst the pain.

John O’Donohue Crosses the Divide

Credit: www.johnodonohue.com

O’Donohue, who was born in 1956 to a Gaelic-speaking family on a farm in Ireland, was influenced strongly by the landscape in which he grew up. An ordained priest with a doctorate in Philosophical Theology, he left the priestly ministry to focus on writing after publishing two books to wide acclaim. O’Donohue died in 2008 at the age of 52.

According to the website of his literary estate, O’Donohue’s legacy “directs our search for intimacy to crucial thresholds: tradition and modernity, past and future, life and death, the visible and the invisible world. At the heart of [his] awakened beliefs was the premise that ancient wisdom could offer desperately needed nourishment for the spiritual hunger experienced in our modern world.”

In “For Grief,” O’Donohue does just that by suggesting that despite the suffering associated with loss, our loved ones live on in our souls. The poem ends on an encouraging note:

Gradually, you will learn acquaintance
With the invisible form of your departed;
And when the work of grief is done,
The wound of loss will heal
And you will have learned
To wean your eyes
From that gap in the air
And be able to enter the hearth
In your soul where your loved one
Has awaited your return
All the time.

You can read the full text of O’Donohue’s poem, “For Grief,” on PoemHunter.com.