A long time ago T. S. Eliot wrote in one of his poems that “April is the cruelest month.” With the war in Iraq going so badly and so many other conflicts bursting out all over the globe these past thirty days of April, we can only answer Eliot with a sad, sad “Yes.” The lives of hundreds of thousands of families and friends of people wounded and killed from and in many countries in the world will never be the same.

So often it is poetry that can resonate the words we cannot quite bring forth personally when we are hurting and sad. In the week after 9/11, the New Yorker published a poem by a Polish poet Adam Zagajewski entitled “Try to Praise the Mutilated World.” (I am indebted to Esther De Wahl’s lovely little book Lost in Wonder for knowledge of the poem.)

In this poem Adam asks us to find some way to praise the same world that is mutilated; praise it for its moments of beauty, loveliness, quietness that are so often a fleeting gift. Part of the poem goes likes this:

Remember June’s long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew…
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns….
Praise the mutilated world.

I remembered this poem in the past days and tried to honor the moments of beauty and loveliness even while I honored my sadness. Yes, there was the roll call with photographs of women and men killed in Iraq concluding The News Hour on PBS; and I read the women and men’s names out, their age and cities as my husband and I sat in the stillness of grief. And there was also the surprise of the iris blooms—huge bright purple—on the plants my husband brought from the yard of his great-grandmother when she died. We had been waiting for almost ten years for those irises to bloom, and they bloomed this month, this spring. Try to praise the mutilated world… There is the desecration of our air and our water in the U. S., terrible fouling that is increasing and multiplying danger. I sign petitions and write letters and checks. And there was my discovery for the first time behind the gym where I go to work out of the clearest, little stream that rushes over rock ledges and makes the most peaceful sounds in a couple of small waterfalls. Try to praise the mutilated world.

The gentle light that strays and vanishes and returns

So I will do my best to hold the tension: the horrific things being done in our world and the pain and loss of all that…and those precious moments of grace and gift when I do see a red bird in the cedar tree by the edge of the garage, when I hear the soft rain falling in the valley behind our house. May each of us find someway, while acknowledging the truth of what is happening here at home and far away, to notice strawberries, dew, a gray feather, and gentle light. Praise the mutilated world.

Dr. Elizabeth Harper Neeld offers wisdom and practical insights to anyone whose life is in a time of transition, change, grief and loss of any kind. As an internationally recognized and accomplished consultant, and author of more than twenty books - including Tough Transitions and Seven Choices: Finding Daylight After Loss Shatters Your World - she is committed to work that helps lift the human spirit.