A Scattering

I have been reading a book of poems by the British poet, Christopher Reid, written after the death of his wife Lucinda from brain cancer, A Scattering. There is much that speaks to me in these poems. If you would like to understand me as I now am, read this, I would like to say. (Unfortunately it is not easy to buy in the US.)

Here are a couple from his "Widower's Dozen":

Conundrum

I’m the riddle to an answer:
I’m an unmarried spouse,
a flesh-and-blood revenant,
my own ghost, inhabitant
of an empty house.

A Reasonable Thing to Ask

Please explain tears.
They must have some purpose
that a Darwin or a Freud
would have understood.

Widowed, a man hears
music off the radio –
Handel – Cole Porter –
that sharply recalls her,
and they swamp up again.

A faculty that interferes
with seeing and speaking
and leaves him feeling weaker:
what does he gain by it?

What do we gain by it –
blind to the tiger’s leap,
voiceless under the avalanche?
Somebody must know.

Actually, I think we gain a great deal by tears. They are a great source of consolation. They are necessary. Augustine has a beautiful image for this when he writes that in setting free his tears for his mother's death, which he had repressed, he was he was "spreading them out as a pillow beneath my heart."