Resistance moon: Three letters that you will not get

In yesterday’s poem, Lawrence Ferlinghetti did a powerful lot of waiting. Historically, women have done a lot of that—laboring quietly at home (work that, per se, is often only noticed when it doesn’t for some reason get done) and waiting for the outcome of the Big Events that we’re told only men can produce.

Like enjoying the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake ever while ordering the firing of 59 missiles on…one of those countries in the Middle East that are so easy to confuse when boasting to a bimbo. (And how idiotic do you have to be when the otherwise fawning bimbo corrects you?) After all—Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan; sooner or later the Kleptocrat will get around to killing their citizens bigly because he’s learned the lesson that doing so gives him a bump in his approval ratings and deflects for a news cycle or two from investigations into his and his Gauleiters’ dealings with Russians. So if he misspeaks “Iraq” for “Syria” this time, meh—wait a week or so and he’ll be right.

Oh, I digress.

If you’ve ever listened to Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam as was) sing “Morning Has Broken” (or been surprised to find the song in your church hymnal), then you’re familiar with Eleanor Farjeon, an English poet, journalist and writer of children’s books. Farjeon came from a late Victorian literary family, and counted among her friends D.H. Lawrence, Walter de la Mare and Robert Frost (who lived for some time in England until World War I broke out). One of her closest friendships was with the poet Edward Thomas and his wife Helen.

On Easter Monday, 9 April 1917, Thomas was killed in his first action, at Arras. Farjeon wrote a poem that captures that instant when we at home learn that the one at war has paid the highest price for policy. The tiniest of things are etched eternally into our memories, some to bring a glimmer of joy, others an unexpected rush of tears. Sometimes for the rest of our lives.

“Easter Monday”

(In Memoriam E.T.)

In the last letter that I had from France
You thanked me for the silver Easter egg
Which I had hidden in the box of apples

You like to munch beyond all other fruit.

You found the egg the Monday before Easter,

And said. ‘I will praise Easter Monday now –

It was such a lovely morning’. Then you spoke

Of the coming battle and said, ‘This is the eve.

‘Good-bye. And may I have a letter soon’.

That Easter Monday was a day for praise,

It was such a lovely morning. In our garden

We sowed our earliest seeds, and in the orchard

The apple-bud was ripe. It was the eve,

There are three letters that you will not get.