Yet another November approaches. We use to say that it is when we remember those who have passed away. But how can we speak of passing away when one’s presence is still writing ever new pages in one’s own and in another’s Book of Days? “So many hearts run towards you”, my dearest Ewa, and feel those caring messages inscribed in sympathetic ink between the lines. Your soulmates speak of you in the present tense, for only such time exists, and you can only be fully present therein. Your book crosses continents and its journeys around the world have already travelled so many unusual ways, destinies and paths of thought. Sometimes objects sparkle on these paths: Magda came across a pendant with a four-leaf clover and a fox (no wonder your book is a bestseller in the ‘foxy’ antiquarian bookshop Slightly Foxed!), and I keep finding heart-shaped pendants — and I smile, looking up at the sky. Your bench in Haworth, on the route to Wuthering Heights, still brings people together, and with every photo of tourists posing on it and every message “(S)he knows about Ewa too” — sent in by David — the memory of you flourishes like a Secret Garden.
When the northern lights have shone over Poland this year, and then a comet unfurled its tail, we knew, that it must be you humming to the words of Enya’s China Roses:
Who can tell me if we have heaven,
Who can say the way it should be;
Moonlight holly, the Sappho Comet,
Angel’s tears below a tree.
You talk of the break of morning
As you view the new aurora,
Cloud in crimson, the key of heaven,
One love carved in acajou.
And we know, that these penultimate stanzas are now your sound track, now leading you across your own dreamland:
A new moon leads me to
Woods of dreams and I follow.
A new world waits for me;
My dream, my way.
I know that if I have heaven
There is nothing to desire.
Rain and river, a world of wonder
May be paradise to me.
But even there you will find your idiolectical ‘lunette’ — a little window in a shape of a crescent (or maybe in the shape of the the rainbow too), through which you look upon us. And whenever a golden thread of peace, wisdom, patience, understanding and tender admiration of beauty is woven into our daily choices, I am sure it is your voice coming from the avian soufflé box.
I know that with this voice you would like to tell us today:
CLARE HARNER
(1909–1977)
IMMORTALITY
Do not stand
By my grave, and weep,
I am not there,
I do not sleep—
I am the thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints in snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle, autumn rain.
As you awake with morning’s hush,
I am the swift, up-flinging rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the day transcending night.
Do not stand
By my grave, and cry—
I am not there,
I did not die.
***
As I did last year — I wholeheartedly encourage you to light a symbolic candle of remembrance for Ewa that will warm your memory of her: LINK
At the same time, I am happy to announce that the Institute of English Studies of the University of Warsaw has given permission for the publication of Ewa’s second (yet chronologically first) thesis, entitled The Arthurian Legend from the Victorian Perspective in Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King”, written under the supervision of Professor Grażyna Bystydzieńska and defended in 2008. My sincere thanks to Ewa’s Parents for making the manuscript available, to the current Head of the Institute of English Studies, UW, Professor Justyna Włodarczyk — for her heart and assistance, and to Mr Simon Hunt (University of York) for his diligent and sensitive approach to the role of proofreader. The beautiful cover illustration, which will soon see the light of day, was done once again by Barbara Sobczyńska, and the typesetting was taken care of together with Jakub Niedziela. If you would like to have this book (or both books) by Ewa in a paperback edition, please contact me via the form on the website.
translated by Jakub Niedziela