“Pity the World” —Shakespeare
“Love interprets and conveys messages to the gods from us and to us from the gods, preventing the universe from falling into two separate halves.”
—Plato
I
Take me with you, Melissa,
To that place you went—
Heaven is not an accident;
Heaven is where the angels belong
In light everlasting and song.
Take me with you, Melissa,
To that place you go—
We know what we hate,
Do we love what we know?
Do we love the place we all shall go?
Do we know, Melissa, that God has more worth
Than hate and all that crawls on the earth?
Do we know the love that resides with you—
Gone, gone, but still true?
Do I know where I am
If I don’t know where you are?
I love, but I get no nearer to the star.
Where are you, Melissa? Are you near or far?
I ask these questions, in ignorance, on earth.
I don’t know God, or God’s worth.
I am sad and limited and ignorant.
Take me with you, Melissa,
To the place you went—
Everything but love is an accident.
II
She is working late again.
The stars hang over the office,
Kind in their distance.
She is working late this evening
On an email that came from far.
We will carouse and we will drowse
But she is working late again
On an email that was written in a car,
In haste, on a cell phone.
Sometimes work brings us together
And sometimes we work alone
She is working late, in the company of a star,
On an email written on a phone
By a student’s parent in a car.
A credit was earned in another state
And that is why she is working late.
There is a freedom in working late
When the stars don’t see you home
But settle down beside you in the quiet of the evening
Where the computer glows
And the clock, broken by love, hardly goes.
Why does the lady work late?
For God and country and love?
Is it for the firm, for the education found
On the football field, on the cement ground?
You are working late this evening, lady!
Home is calling you.
The children and the grandchildren, too.
Everyone is worried now, and the cell phone
And the emails have that urgent tone
That we have known all our lives
When we lie awake at night and no matter who is there, we feel alone.
Work late, work late, my lady, work late, work late, my lady,
There was an email written from a cell phone
To you. She needed something. A flame beside her.
The committee has decided she will work late this evening,
That she will work for free
That she will work tonight on what pertains to you and me.
The director approves whatever loves;
Whoever loves, loves the lady,
Who now wears her love in regions shady
In regions known only by a star,
Dim star of God!
In the shadows we see our dearest lady.
III
When I am weary
And the world seems weary, too,
I think of the loveliness and lastingness of you.
You bring me the wisdom to love all things, even death.
When my days are weary
And the world is weary, and no happiness is able to stir,
And all things seem far away, and nothing seems able to last—
I think of the beauty and lastingness of her—
Who is here—not in the past.
The loving and the beautiful will last.
Forever is forever, and conquers the past.
The lady lives. For she was giving.
The lady is—continually living.
IV
In the Italy in heaven where the lady now goes
Each river and stream with our tears flows—
Each of our tears, heavy with sorrow, drops,
On the Italian mountaintops
And freshens the Italian valleys.
The mountains, the sunlight and the greenery
Delight the lady in heaven, for our tears feed the scenery.
We are weeping.
She hears us not: Look! She thinks, This path needs sweeping.
We sit in darkness, our eyes, red.
She walks an Italian street, enchanted.
Then, when heaven opens for us (at last,)
She will thank us for each tear we shed in the past.
On her little street, surrounded by flowers,
Where after she first left us, she stood for hours,
By a tiny stream in her Italian heaven,
The lady will announce to us, with a smile like the sun:
Come to me! My friends! The tears are done!
