the aesthetization of sorrow

 

The Role of Elegy

The role of elegy is

To put a death mask on tragedy,

A drape on the mirror.

To bow to the cultural

 

Debate over the aesthetization of sorrow,

Of loss, of the unbearable

Afterimage of the once material.

To look for an imagined

 

Consolidation of grief

So we can all be finished

Once and for all and genuinely shut up

The cabinet of genuine particulars.

 

Instead there’s the endless refrain

One hears replayed repeatedly

Through the just ajar door:

Some terrible mistake has been made.

 

What is elegy but the attempt

To rebreathe life

Into what the gone one once was

Before he grew to enormity.

 

Come on stage and be yourself,

The elegist says to the dead. Show them

Now—after the fact—

What you were meant to be:

 

The performer of a live song.

A shoe. Now bow.

What is left but this:

The compulsion to tell.

 

The transient distraction of ink on cloth

One scrubbed and scrubbed

But couldn’t make less.

Not then, not soon.

 

Each day, a new caption on the cartoon

Ending that simply cannot be.

One hears repeatedly, the role of elegy is.

 

“The Role of Elegy” by Mary Jo Bang. 

image - sorry, lost link.