There’s something beautiful, something like solidarity, about lamentations. I used to hide my own. Men, it is often believed, must not show pain.
But “Jesus wept.”
“David seized his garments and tore them, and so did all the men who were with him. They mourned and wept and fasted until evening…”
Lincoln wept. Washington wept. Grant wept. These men were not weak.
Still, I hid my lamentations. Last year, when I rediscovered that part of myself, I wrote the following poem.
An Old Part
I fell in love with an old part of me today,
A part I'd hid away so many years ago
Because I thought his antics were the reason
Someone left me, hurt me, left me hurting, bleeding.
Today, I saw him staring, peeking from the dark,
Peeking from behind the dusty stereo,
A relic of the songs we sang so long ago,
Their echoes fading in my heart, rippling apart.
I said, "come out," and he came out.
To my surprise, he wasn't ugly, and he wasn't evil.
He wasn't angry either. He was what I'd forgotten to be.
He was hurt. That was him, this sub-soul of my soul,
This notion I'd betrayed so many years ago.
I'd said, "your lamentations drove her away."
But I lament, now, by letting him come out.
I lament at having hid that rare, essential part
So deep beneath the shadows of my heart.
All the wisest souls in all the wisest books
Sing lamentations. Half of life is lamentation!
And without it, how could we ever know
The joy of claps and laughs and jubilation?
That innocent soul I locked away so long ago,
He hasn't changed a bit. But I have changed.
I have found I couldn't live so thoroughly
Without his heartfelt, melancholic shout.
Over the next few days, I’ll post a few more “melancholic shouts.”