Publisher
Jacob Smullyan writes:
“On June 4th, 2016, poet Jack Foley’s wife, Adelle Foley, who
was (as she told her doctor) ‘never sick,’ was diagnosed with stomach cancer;
she died on June 27th. They had been married for nearly fifty-five years and
were an exceptionally close couple. Adelle was also a poet and, like Jack, had
published widely. He wrote about her, ‘How can there be sunlight and you not in
it?’
“In the months after her death, with extraordinary courage and
directness, Jack opened his heart with a series of poems and letters to his
friends, many of whom responded with poems of their own. These documents of
intense necessity, brought together, make up the deeply moving collection that
is Grief Songs: an expression, certainly, of a year of
desperate grief, but more essentially, of a lifetime of love.”
And with what the dead left behind
Especially when they left behind so much.
Dead the with do we do what
Behind left dead the what with and
Much so behind left they when especially.
—Jack Foley
*
NOVEMBER 13, NOVEMBER 18
I think
that, recently, neither
of us
remembered
the date
of our
first
meeting
but it
was preserved
in a
cartoon:
November
18, 1960.
Today,
I sat
in an
ice cream shop
with my
friends
Paul and
Vu
and Vu’s
daughter Kaitlin.
I fell
silent
uncertain
whether
the date
were today, November 13
or the next
Friday, November 18.
The 18th
won out
but I had
to wait
until
the sweetness and good humor
of my
friends had ended.
We
parted, smiling.
But
tears poured out of me
as soon
as I was alone.
I
suddenly remembered
the
moment when Adelle and I first tongue kissed
in a
“date parlor”
in
Towson, Maryland
(November 18)
and I
began to feel
the love
that
will stay with me
till the
end of my days
*
BEFORE HER DEATH…
Matthew
Fox writes, “One of the most wonderful concepts that Hildegard [von Bingen]
gifts us with is a term that I have never found in any other theologian...the
word viriditas or greening power” (Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen).
The word suggests “veritas,” truth, as well as “veridicus,” speaking the truth.
Wikipedia: “The
definition of viriditas or ‘greenness’ is an earthly expression of the heavenly
in an integrity that overcomes dualisms. This greenness or power of life
appears frequently in Hildegard’s works.”
Some years
ago, Poetry Flash editor Joyce
Jenkins challenged me to “write a nature poem” for her Watershed event. I found
my mind returning to Kore / Persephone, especially to her aspect as seed,
thrust underground but emerging to flower. I remembered as well W.C. Williams’
poem, “Of Asphodel, That Greeny Flower” and Denise Levertov’s book of nature
poems, The Life Around Us. Adelle was
diagnosed with cancer on Saturday, June 4, 2016. I told her doctor, “We want to
keep her.” Adelle chimed in, “I want to be kept.” The doctor remarked that
Adelle was “taking the news well.” She then asked, “What about him?”—me. Adelle answered, accurately,
“A little less well.”
In 1960—we
were both twenty—she sang an ancient French song, “A la Claire Fontaine,” to
me. It was a sweet gesture of young love. The refrain of the song is “Il y a longtemps que je t’aime / Jamais je ne t’oublierai” (“I have loved you for a long
time / I will never forget you”). Over the years we often sang the song
together. In 2016 I sang the song to her as she lay dying in the hospital: “I
have loved you for a long time / I will never forget you.” She died at 5 a.m.
on June 27, 2016. I wrote many years ago:
It’s not a dream
We lose those we love
but we love
anyway
I
read “Viriditas” to Adelle shortly before her death.
VIRIDITAS
Viriditas—
the dream
of a green
world
It is not
enough
to say
“the life
around us”—
we are
“the life
around us”
it is not
possible
to be
apart
from
nature
(“natura naturans”)
the
conditions
in
which
consciousness—
“this”
consciousness—
happens
are
serious, tentative, and limited
this
dream
of
green
I am that flower
you hold
in your
hand
we are
light
coming to
consciousness
of
itself
men &
women
of light
what is
mind
but light?
what is
body?
“Make
LIGHT of it,”
writes my
friend
James
Broughton—
Walking,
I vanish
into light—
Kora—the seed—
above ground—under—
the
need
to follow her—down the rabbit hole
following
the
idea
of resurrection—
seed-
time
vanishes/returns we grow
in branch and root
in winged or finny stuff
or cloven hoof
in bird-
sound, animal alarm or
pleasure
(describe a scene—
scene vanishes—
mind appears—)
Kore woman
under
ground
No need
that is
not satisfied
of food
or sex—
…
greenness, love:
as
you lie in this moment
of
danger,
as
you sleep
wondering
if the next sleep
will
be death,
“this
greeny flower,”
this
green
comes
to you
the
power of life
Viriditas
*
MY WIFE ADELLE’S DEATH
What you
discover in such a situation
is what
Rousseau called
le
néant des choses humaines
the
nothingness of human affairs
Adelle’s
concerns—the laundry, our finances,
her
plants, dinner, people at AC Transit, people
in the
local community, poetry people, whether
I parked
the car close enough to the curb,
her VISA
card, the Toyota, her haiku, the goldfish, me,
the
light in the leaves as she passed by in the morning,
credit
cards, J.R.R. Tolkien, Octavia Butler, Miss
Fisher’s Murder
Mysteries, the egrets at Lake Merritt,
the
homeless on her way to AC Transit
(to whom
she gave money and boxes of raisins),
her son
and daughter in law,
hundreds
of others
in a
complex web of caring—
all
disappeared poof in a few moments
on the
afternoon of June 25, 2016
in a
Kaiser hospital room
when she
fainted in “septic shock” and her dear heart stopped.
Suddenly,
all of that was gone
as if it
never existed
le
néant des choses humaines
I
remember it, some of it—even most of it—but for her
it’s a
spider web someone brushed off a window—
gone.
It is
this that we make poems and stories and beautiful lies
to
avoid:
this
sudden view
when a
long-loved, long-known, long-accepted person dies
& we
see it
deep and
clear
*
AUGUST 15, 2016
It’s your birthday
My dear,
dead love
I had begun
a birthday poem
My wife
My life
And had
already bought some gifts for you
A
Monday—Moon Day
“Looney”
in our Dellwackian fantasy
Who paired
with the tiny sun,
“Salvador
Dully”
You made a
cartoon for me
Eight days
before your death
(Six
before the day
You
forever lost consciousness)
I am
trying to find
Another
life to fit me
But what
could ever fit me
So well as
the life we made
As Moon
and Sun
As Dell
Dell and Jack Wack
As the EEE
Monster
And the
DDD Monster
As all the
phantasmagoria
That rose
out of our love,
That kept
our love
Forever
alive:
They never
stopped loving
Even when
you and I faltered
They
wondered why Dellwackia
Suddenly
looked
Like a
hospital room.
I’ve
cooked dinner for you tonight
Polpette,
purpettes,
A meal you
loved
That came
from my mother’s
Long
Calabrese line.
Dear
friends will join me
And then
we’ll watch
A favorite
film:
Hitchcock’s
Foreign Correspondent
Looney and
Salvador Dully
Will watch
it too
And Dell
Dell and Jack Wack
And the
Monsters.
Everyone
loves
The poems
I’ve been writing
About your
death
You were
always my Muse
And today
is the birthday
You could
not celebrate.
Our love
remains
In all
these figures
In all
these words
While you
Whirl
through the universe
(If such
things are true)
Forgetting
birth and death
Forgetting
Dellwackia and me
Remembering
only
The deep
configurations
Of Life
and Love.
[The names
mentioned are cartoon characters in a joint fantasy that Adelle and I
maintained for years. We drew pictures for each other and gave the characters
voices. She was Dell Dell—a name her father gave to her when she was a child.
I, “J.W. Foley,” was Jack Wack. The DDD Monster and the EEE Monster, etc. all
figured into this fantasy, which took place in a country named for the queen
and king: Dellwackia. We had a ritual for turning out the bedroom lights at
night. The Dellwackians didn’t understand electricity but they would all gather
and in their various voices “blow out the candle.” After the lights were out, I
would say, “’Night, Dell.” She would answer, “’Night, Wack.” The lights are
still on in our bedroom.]
*
YAHRZEIT (June 27, 2017)
for
Adelle
It
is
What
the Jews call Yahrzeit,
A
year since your death.
The
word stings.
If
you retain any consciousness of the world
You
know
That
I have found a new love.
She
has been
A
wonder and a comfort
In
my grief for you.
I
think you would have liked her
(And
mothered her!).
Going
through your dresser drawer
As
we attempt to find room for her things,
She
found
A
fancy, almost comically sexy garter.
I
had forgotten it
But
recognized it immediately.
You
wore it only once,
On
the night of December 21, 1961,
Our
wedding night;
You
kept it, as you kept many other things, for all these years.
How
we formed each other.
How
we treasured each other’s hearts.
If
the stories are true,
You
may be in bliss
While
I find my way through this quivering wall of sorrow and tears.
And
love.
My
first love, my dear first love,
It
has been a year
(Has
it been a year?),
Yahrzeit.
Your
ashes
Remain
in the vanishing morning light.
[N.B.
GRIEF
SONGS is currently available at SPD:
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