The Saddest Poem?

I have a friend, one of those friends who comes along only a few times in a lifetime, if you’re lucky. The sort of friend who understands you in ways and to a degree that, sometimes, reveals depths of yourself of which you were not even the slightest bit aware. You know the sort? This friend of mine, she’s a writer, among other thing; a published poet and novelist who, it should be noted, is more that a little bit crazy. I mean that if there were a deep end, she’d be looking up towards it. But I love her, of course.

When we were younger and more lost in the world, or at least more aware of being lost, we spent a lot of time together coming up with absolutely foolish games, one of which was to depress the shit out of each other with a poem or a passage from a novel. It doesn’t sound very fun, but it kind of was. I would get an email, or a phone call, with no greeting, just a poem. And damn were most of them depressing as hell.

If there was a winner in our game, it was undoubtedly she — she teaches poetry, so it wasn’t really a fair fight. Her best entries were usually Dickinson, which is unsurprising, since Dickinson was herself chronically depressed, and when I think about it, I’m pretty sure this one was the winner:

I cannot live with You –
It would be Life –
And Life is over there –
Behind the Shelf

The Sexton keeps the Key to –
Putting up
Our Life – His Porcelain –
Like a Cup –

Discarded of the Housewife –
Quaint – or Broke –
A newer Sevres pleases –
Old Ones crack –

I could not die – with You –
For One must wait
To shut the Other’s Gaze down –
You – could not –

And I – could I stand by
And see You – freeze –
Without my Right of Frost –
Death’s privilege?

Nor could I rise – with You –
Because Your Face
Would put out Jesus’ –
That New Grace

Glow plain – and foreign
On my homesick Eye –
Except that You than He
Shone closer by –

They’d judge Us – How –
For You – served Heaven – You know,
Or sought to –
I could not –

Because You saturated Sight –
And I had no more Eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise

And were You lost, I would be –
Though My Name
Rang loudest
On the Heavenly fame –

And were You – saved –
And I – condemned to be
Where You were not –
That self – were Hell to Me –

So We must meet apart –
You there – I – here –
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are – and Prayer –
And that White Sustenance –
Despair –

“I cannot live with you/It would be life/And life is over there/Behind the shelf,” and “So we must meet apart/You there – I – here/With just the Door ajar/That Oceans are” are lines like little daggers of sadness. Tough to beat.

I thought about that poem, and my friend, as I read Nick Ripatrazone‘s (via) argument that “The Saddest Poem Ever Written” is Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Spring and Fall.” And damned if it isn’t remarkably sad:

to a young childMárgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Ripatrazone writes of it:

A well-placed poem can remind us that our existences are, cosmically, equally as brief as these 15 lines. “Spring and Fall” accumulates toward the heavy conclusion that our truest sadness is the recognition that it is not the falling of leaves that pains us, but our own falls, however public or personal. Although Hopkins held a very particular worldview, “Spring and Fall” knows no exclusive creed, race, gender, or time period. It is a poem about our “blight.” The one we share with those we hate and love. Poetry must sometimes tear us apart before it brings us together. For those reasons, “Spring and Fall” is the saddest poem ever written.

“Poetry must sometimes tear us apart before it brings us together.” That sounds exactly like the purpose of our little game.

What’s your saddest poem?