x "

Silence. Does silence
Make things vanish?
Or confirm
their disappearance?
Is the beloved
Who has died
Buried more deeply
By silence
Than by earth?

Even closed
And locked away
The Book whispers
About the beloved
In dreams. Still,
It’s a whispering
Difficult to understand,
Impossible almost.

But if we find it
The Book and open it,
If we find the poem
That is trying to find us,
The poem the beloved
Wrote and sent to out
On the long journey
Toward our heart—if
We find that poem,
It all makes sense
And the silence recedes
Before the beloved’s
Quiet voice speaking to us.

"
— Gregory Orr, from Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved

x "The poem didn’t express
Emotion; it was emotion.
And so was I
As I became the poem,
As I read it aloud,
As I rose from my daily grave."
— Gregory Orr, in Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved

Untitled [A house just like my mother’s]

A house just like his mother’s,
But made of words.
Everything he could remember
Inside it:
Parrots and a bowl
Of peaches, and the bright rug
His grandmother wove.

Shadows also—mysteries
And secrets.
Corridors
Only ghosts patrol.
And did I mention
Strawberry jam and toast?

Did I mention
That everyone he loved
Lives there now,

In that poem
He called “My Mother’s House?”

— Gregory Orr

(Source: poets.org)

x "

When you’re afraid
You’re afraid
Of something.

When you dread,
It’s Nothing
That you dread
(so the philosopher
said).
Nothing
Can be
Terrifying.
But don’t get
Confused: a blank
Page in the Book
Isn’t Nothing.

It’s something
Waiting to happen,
It’s the beloved
Holding her breath,
Hoping you’ll write or call.

"
— Gregory Orr, from Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved

x "Why should it all
Be lost?
Why should time take away
That day by the river?

Surely, the storerooms
Of oblivion
Are full to bursting.
Surely, to bring back
That single scene
In all its glory
Wouldn’t harm
The order of things.

If only in the words
Of a song or a poem.
If only for a moment,
Restoring that moment."
— Gregory Orr, from Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved

x "Some say you’re lucky
If nothing shatters it.

But then you wouldn’t
Understand poems or songs.
You’d never know
Beauty comes from loss.

It’s deep inside every person:
A tear tinier
Than a pearl or thorn.

It’s one of the places
Where the beloved is born."
— Gregory Orr, from Concerning the Book That Is the Body of the Beloved

x "

Do words outlast
The world
They describe?
Do the things
Fall away,
Leaving only
The husks
Of their names?

And what does
Their perishing
Ask of us?

Lift up, lift up:
A song
Could redeem them.
A poem
Could fill them
With life again.

Don’t we owe
The world
At least that much,
That gave itself
So freely to us?

"
— Gregory Orr, from Concerning the Book That Is the Body of the Beloved

x "Not the loss alone,
But what comes after.
If it ended completely
At loss, the rest
Wouldn’t matter.

But you go on.
And the world also.

And words, words
In a poem or song:
Aren’t they a stream
On which your feelings float?

Aren’t they also
The banks of that stream
And you yourself the flowing?"
— Gregory Orr, fromConcerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved

x "… I held
Back about love
All those years:
Talking about death
Insistently, even
As I was alive;
Talking about loss
As if all was loss,
As if the world
Did not return
Each morning."
— Gregory Orr, from Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved