Tag Archives: Raymond Carver

To Call Myself Beloved

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The last poem in Raymond Carver’s collection A New Path to the Waterfall is called “Late Fragment.” Legend has it that his wife, Tess Gallagher, found it scribbled on a scrap of paper in the pocket of his bathrobe a few weeks after he died from brain cancer.

And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to

feel myself

Beloved on the earth.

Raymond Carver screwed up most of his life with alcohol, but he spent the last eleven years of his brief time on this earth sober, successful, and happily married. Then he died from brain cancer anyway. That’s how life goes, right? No promises. No deals. No rest for the wicked and only the good die young.

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As I grow older and my heart gets tougher, those two words–even so?–resonate. They are the acknowledgement of all that has come before, the good and the bad, the fair and the shitty: “Did you get what you wanted from this life, even considering all that has happened to you and where you are right now and whether you deserve this fate?” Carver accepts it all with two simple words: I did.

Oh, when I read this poem for the first time, I thought I knew a thing or two about life. I was 21 and completely enthralled by a man who was totally out of my reach. He loaned me this book–he liked to lend me books and ideas and I lived to borrow them, mostly because they had been imprinted with his approval. So when this poem worked its way into my tender and untried heart, I skipped right to those last words: to feel myself/Beloved on the earth. Being beloved is the point of life, right?

Nope.

The longer I live, the more I realize that the heart of this poem, this last fragment from the crumbling mind of a bruised genius is the line just above that: To call myself beloved.

It’s not about the even so and whether it will ever be balanced out.

It’s not just about being beloved while on the earth.

The work of this life is to call myself beloved.

 

late fragment

Cherish

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Here’s one thing I love about having a space for writing:  I am surrounded by my books, which are filled with ideas, and that comes in handy at times like RIGHT NOW when I really feel a desperate urge to write but cannot think of a damn thing I want to say. Every spine of every volume reminds me that all writers have a moment (or year) when they get stuck.  Misery loves company and these writers are good company because they made it through.

I reached over just now and picked up a slim gray book of poems by Raymond Carver called “A New Path to the Waterfall.”  I bought this copy for myself in the spring of 1990.  A professor of mine, on whom I had a huge crush, had loaned me his copy earlier in the year because he thought I might like it.  I did.  I loved it and I loved him and that’s OK to confess now because I’m 45 and it feels sweet, not embarrassing, to remember that time when he and I would talk about books and painting and the ways of the world.  I was 21 and really looking to have my heart broken a few times.  Just to check, I googled him and his smile still made my tired old heart go pitter pat.  

carver_gallagherOne thing that drew me to this book of poems when I was 21 was the tragic story of Carver’s life.  He died in 1988 from lung cancer at the age of 50.  But he was supposed to have died 10 years before that.  Carver tried his best to drink himself to death but managed to get clean at 40.  He called the rest of his life “gravy” (and there’s a poem by that name, too).  In that last best 10 years, he made a life with Tess Gallagher, a fellow writer.  When they learned that he was dying, they married so they could call each other husband and wife.

Well.  That rings a bell.  These poems that I loved when I was a heartsick 21 year old girl mean even more to me now that I also know what it is like to promise “til Death do us part” when Death is practically a guest at the wedding.

So here is a lovely poem, written by Ray in the days between his marriage and his death.  After he died, Tess gathered all these last poems and assembled “A New Path to the Waterfall.”  His gifts to her; her gift to him.  

Cherish

From the window I see her bend to the roses
holding close to the bloom so as not to
prick her fingers. With the other hand she clips, pauses and
clips, more alone in the world
than I had known. She won’t
look up, not now. She’s alone
with roses and with something else I can only think, not
say. I know the names of those bushes

given for our late wedding: Love, Honor, Cherish—
this last the rose she holds out to me suddenly, having
entered the house between glances. I press
my nose to it, draw the sweetness in, let it cling—scent
of promise, of treasure. My hand on her wrist to bring her close,
her eyes green as river-moss. Saying it then, against
what comes: wife, while I can, while my breath, each hurried petal
can still find her.

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Avo’s Hummingbird

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Female Green Crowned Hummingbird

By Charlesjsharp, via Wikimedia Commons

G cleaned our hummingbird feeder tonight and made fresh nectar for a tiny bird he has named “Buddy.”  A few weeks ago, G was out on the deck in the still of the morning when a little hummingbird flitted in and out of petunias in the flower boxes.  The two of them spent a peaceful few moments together.  G delighted that the hummingbird showed no fear as it came closer and closer to him.  

As bluebirds are special to me, hummingbirds are the bird that G shares with his Avo (the Portuguese word for grandfather).  When Avo retired to his little house in Carmo de Minas, he made a project of feeding the hummingbirds.  But one day, he forgot.  That afternoon, he took his walk two blocks over to the town square to sit under the shade trees and rest.  While he enjoyed the stillness, a little hummingbird flitted up to him.  It hung there, flying circles in the air before Avo’s face.  Avo laughed, hauled himself up off the bench and began his slow walk home to fill the feeder.  The hummingbird buzzed beside him all the way.

G’s grandmother, Vovo, died a few weeks ago, right around when Buddy showed up on the deck.  G and I are both rationalists, but when he told me about the hummingbird that wasn’t afraid of him, I said, “I think it was your grandfather, here to tell you that your grandmother isn’t suffering.”  We, the rationalists, let that thought be, let it hold itself up against all logic, just like the hummingbird.

I cannot think of hummingbirds without remembering this tiny jewel of a poem by Raymond Carver:

Hummingbird

For Tess

Suppose I say summer,
write the word “hummingbird,”
put it in an envelope,
take it down the hill
to the box.  When you open
my letter you will recall
those days and how much,
just how much, I love you.

—Raymond Carver

 

When Raymond Carver wrote these lines to his beloved Tess Gallagher, he was dying slowly of an inoperable tumor.  He knew there would be a day when she would need to be reminded of how much, just how much, he loved her.  So he wrote the word “hummingbird.”

Peace to Avo and Vovo and all those who have flown before us.