For Alice

This week has been very difficult. Coming to terms with the loss of someone dear is not easy, and accepting the entirety of the situation cannot be done all at once.

I have begun to be able to draw comfort from the many happy times I shared with Alice, and last night I remembered this poem which I read at a school carol service about 25 years ago. This too has given me great comfort, and is my chosen way to think about Alice's passing.

The angel and the girl are met.
Earth was the only meeting place.
For the embodied never yet
Travelled beyond the shore of space.
The eternal spirits in freedom go.

See, they have come together, see,
While the destroying minutes flow,
Each reflects the other’s face
Till heaven in hers and earth in his
Shine steady there. He’s come to her
From far beyond the farthest star,
Feathered through time. Immediacy
Of strangest strangeness is the bliss
That from their limbs all movement takes.
Yet the increasing rapture brings
So great a wonder that it makes
Each feather tremble on his wings.

Outside the window footsteps fall
Into the ordinary day
And with the sun along the wall
Pursue their unreturning way.
Sound’s perpetual roundabout
Rolls its numbered octaves out
And hoarsely grinds its battered tune.

But through the endless afternoon
These neither speak nor movement make,
But stare into their deepening trance
As if their gaze would never break.

(Edwin Muir: The Annunciation)