C. K. Williams

I wanted to post an extract from Elergy For An Artist by C. K. Williams. The poem, taken from his 2003 collection 'The Singing', is broken into 4 parts. It's a poem about grief and so invariably there are lines about love that are as poignant for the living to say out loud, as they are for the dead. I want to put my favourite lines below. They are taken for the second part of the poem Wept (The Day After)

'so much affectionate
accord there was with you,
that to imagine
being without you
is impossibly
diminishing; I relied
on you to ratify
me, to reflect
and sanction with your life
who I might be in mine.'

It's a lovely piece of writing that is all at once tragic, quiet and uplifting. It's powerful. I particularly like the use of the words 'ratify' and 'sanction' as they give the poem edge and save it from being cloying or too much like a wedding vow. Although, actually, it would make a nice wedding vow.