I studied French in college and Latin in high school, so a good bit of the vocabulary is familiar. The one that stuck out the most was the very first poem she sent me by Miguel Ramos Carrion, El Seminarista de los ojos negros. She started by sending me a few poems in Spanish. Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.Īfter our first exchange online on Easter Sunday 2017, Kathy and I got to know each other a little better by sending each other poetry.
I would spread the cloths under your feet: I closed this session by sending her Yeats’, The Cloths of Heaven I told her that I had made something of a pilgrimage in 2003 to Sligo in Ireland to places that Yeats had written about in many of his poems: The Lake Isle of Innisfree, In the Seven Woods, The Wild Swans at Coole, the Tower. I was really touched that this girl seemed to know Yeats so well.
Since I was contemplating the pilgrimage to Santiago and since Kathy was the girl in the picture at the end of the pilgrimage, this line seemed rather poignant to me. Yes, one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, I thought to myself. How many loved your moments of glad grace,Īnd loved your beauty with love false or true,īut one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,Īnd loved the sorrows of your changing face I was surprised when Kathy told me that she already knew the poem, and she rattled off a number of other poems by Yeats, including When You Are Old, which had a beautiful line in it that has always stuck with me. Here’s a YouTube version read by Michael Gambon with music and imagery. Just as I felt that Kathy was telling me something about her in the poem she sent me, I tried to find a Yeats poem that would tell her something about me, about my mystical, romantic questing side. I had taken a course on his poetry as an undergraduate at Georgetown. My favorite is the Irish poet, William Butler Yeats. I am only really familiar with a few poets. I racked my brain looking for a good poem to send back to her. “I like your taste in poetry,” I wrote Kathy after she sent me the poem about the seminarian with the black eyes. Needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall. When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced. Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy. Remember that the other is asleep upon your bed. Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,”Īnd others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”īut I say unto you, they are inseparable.Īnd when one sits, alone with you at your board, You are weeping for that which has been your delight. The very wood that was hollowed with knives?Īnd you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow The very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?Īnd is not the lute that soothes your spirit,
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, I sent her a poem, On Joy and Sorrow, by the Lebanese-American poet Khalil Ghibran, from his collection The Prophet.Īnd the selfsame well from which your laughter rises I told her that I believed joy and sorrow were just two sides of the same coin. She was a little distressed by the story of my sadness, but I told her not to worry. Kathy told me that she had many difficulties in her life, but she had made the choice to be happy. I couldn’t help but feel happy when I saw Kathy’s smile. It was a bright clear ray of sunshine for me in the darkness. It was then that I saw Kathy’s profile online and was captivated by her smile. That’s when I started online dating, when I needed to move forward. But it wasn’t long before I realized that this was not going to work. For the first few months of 2017, I stayed in New England and tried to rearrange my life, thinking if I could get myself together professionally, I would create the conditions where she might come back to me. I drifted around Hawaii for awhile, then came back to New England for the holidays. We ended up breaking up the same day Donald Trump was elected President. In particular, I told her the story of how I had been engaged, and had gone to Hawaii to be with my ex-fiancee. I told her how sad I was before I had seen her online and started chatting with her. One day in April 2017, while Kathy and I were texting each other online, we started talking about happiness and sadness.
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