Another poem about grief by the fine and rather overlooked poet Phoebe Hesketh (1909-2005, see also week 60), that captures the way the mind, the ‘love’s advocate’ of the title, tries with small, inconsequential remembered things to fill the great absence in the heart.

Love’s Advocate

I remember sitting together in parks
leaning over bridges
counting trout and swans
holding hands under arches
kissing away suns
and moons into darkness.

I remember platform good-byes
last-minute trains
slamming us apart
and my non-self walking back alone.
I remember smaller things:
a pebble in my shoe
and you throwing a match-box on the Serpentine.

I stood still hearing the years
flow over and over
as over a stone
in a river-bed
polishing, cleaning, wearing away.
But I still remember the last day.

What I cannot remember is how I felt –
mind, love’s advocate,
must remind heart
of the end, the abyss.

The bottom of the world remains;
each day climbs to a new start.

Phoebe Hesketh

I find this short spare poem of loss and grief more moving than many less restrained elegies.

Vernon (1920 – 1996)

I talk to you
and listen…
Silence.

I run to meet you;
the distance exceeds miles.
A faraway church
rises from the trees
to spire the sky.

Impossible to live without you;
I will live on
in the great spaces
till the sun
burns down around us
in a ring of light.

Phoebe Hesketh