"Down to the Frozen Center:" CS Lewis on Grief and Death (physical and spiritual) and Rebirth

I. You think that we who do not shout and shake Our fist at God when youth or bravery die Have colder blood or hearts less apt to ache Than yours who rail. I know you do. Yet why? You have what sorrow always longs to find, Someone to blame, some enemy in chief; Anger's the anesthetic of the mind, It does men good, it fumes away their grief. We feel the stroke like you; so far our fate Is equal. After that, for us begin Half-hopeless labours, learning not to hate, And then to want, and then (perhaps) to win A high, unearthly comfort, angel's food, That seems at first mockery to flesh and blood. II. There's a repose, a safety (even a taste Of something like revenge?) in fixed despair Which we're forbidden. We have to rise with haste And start to climb what seems a crazy stair. Our Consolation (for we are consoled, So much of us, I mean, as may be left After the dreadful process has unrolled) For one bereavement makes us more bereft. It asks for all we have, to the last shred; Read Dante, who had known its best and worst – He was bereaved and he was comforted --- No one denies it, comforted – but first Down to the frozen center, up the vast Mountain of pain, from world to world, he passed. III. Of this we're certain; no one who dared knock At heaven's door for earthly comfort found Even a door – only smooth, endless rock, And save the echo of his cry no sound. It's dangerous to listen; you'll begin To fancy that those echoes (hope can play Pitiful tricks) are answers from within; Far better to turn, grimly sane, away. Heaven cannot thus, Earth cannot ever, give The thing we want. We ask what isn't there And by our asking water and make live That very part of love which must despair And die and go down cold into the earth Before there's talk of springtime and rebirth. IV. Pitch your demand heaven-high and they'll be met. Ask for the Morning Star and take (thrown in) Your earthly love. Why, yes; but how to set One's foot on the first rung, how to begin? The silence of one voice upon our ears Beats like the waves; the coloured morning seems A lying brag; the face we loved appears Fainter each night, or ghastlier, in our dreams. "that long way round which Dante trod was meant For mighty saints and mystics not for me," So Nature cried. Yet if we once assent To Nature's voice, we shall be like the bee That booms against the window-pane for hours Thinking that the way to reach the laden flowers. V. 'If we could speak to her,' my doctor said, 'And told her, "Not that way! All, all in vain You weary out wings and bruise your head," Might she not answer, buzzing at the pane, "Let queens and mystics and religious bees Talk of such inconceivables as glass; the blunt lay worker flies at what she sees, Look there – ahead, ahead – the flowers, the grass!" We catch her in a handkerchief (who knows What rage she feels, what terror, what despair?) And shake her out – and gaily out she goes Where quivering flowers and thick in summer air, To drink their hearts. But left to her own will She would have died upon the window-sill.