Hart Crane, 1899-1932
My Grandmother’s Love Letters
There are no stars tonight
But those of memory.
Yet how much room for memory there is
In the loose girdle of soft rain.
There is even room enough
For the letters of my mother’s mother,
Elizabeth,
That have been pressed so long
Into a corner of the roof
That they are brown and soft,
And liable to melt as snow.
Over the greatness of such space
Steps must be gentle.
It is all hung by an invisible white hair.
It trembles as birch limbs webbing the air.
And I ask myself:
“Are your fingers long enough to play
Old keys that are but echoes:
Is the silence strong enough
To carry back the music to its source
And back to you again
As though to her?”
Yet I would lead my grandmother by the hand
Through much of what she would not understand;
And so I stumble. And the rain continues on the roof
With such a sound of gently pitying laughter.
* * * *
“My Grandmother’s Love Letters” was composed circa Nov/Dec 1919 and first published in April 1920
It also appeared in Crane’s 1926 collection White Buildings
For an index of Hart Crane poems in the Crisis Chronicles Online Library, click here.
More Hart Crane is available in these volumes from Amazon:
My Grandmother’s Love Letters (by Hart Crane)
24 Tuesday Mar 2009
Posted 1900s, American, Cleveland, Crane (Hart), Writing
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