THEN
by Muriel Rukeyser

When I am dead, even then,
I will still love you, I will wait in these poems,
When I am dead, even then
I am still listening to you.
I will still be making poems for you
out of silence;
silence will be falling into that silence,
it is building music.

Although Maz seems to have been a private person, I see now that she touched so many people through her encouragement and her art that the total effect is amazing. I remember her as a fine poet and also a fine critic. She was a great support on non-met, once starting an 'Appreciate Dee' thread on GT when she thought others were protesting too much. For someone who was not the touchy-feely type, this seemed remarkable to me.
I'm sorry she had no family or friends with her. That brings me to tears. But I do hope she had the comfort of her animals. She will be missed. Dee

Sirrus Poe asked me to pass this along.

"I was heart broken to hear the news about M.A. She was a great poet and a good friend online and her insights into others' work was always so keen. I know I am within the group who will miss her lines and her voice. Please pass along my condolences to her friends and her family if possible: she will always be missed by many."

Je me souviens
 

For me to say that Margaret A. Griffiths was a poet would be to call a tidal wave "water". Her words allowed us to ride that wave, if only to this disconsolate shore. Such is the geology of despair. The fault that causes a trickle on our cheeks gives birth to a tsunami.


-o-

.
And from Herself, speaking about a poem she'd written on the afterlife, recalling the one below (yes, Rose, it's on its way to you soon! -- I've been searching some old threads I've saved):

Maz in thread:
I meant the Big One to mean the Big Question--what happens to us after death. I read a very old poem when I was a child:
When I think on thinges three. I can't find that version with google, but this looks like an older version:

Wanne Ich thenche thinges thre
Ne mai neure blithe be.
That oon is Ich sal awe.
That other is Ich ne wot wilk day.
That thridde is mi meste kare:
I ne woth nevre wuder I sal fare.

Please forgive my quick translation:

When I think on matters three,
I may never happy be.
The first is that I must away,
the second: I know not the day.
The third thing gives me my most woe:
I know not whither I shall go.

Regards, Maz

.

Ohhhh man.
This just makes me so so sad.

Maz was the best.
So frisky and fun and sizzlingly sweet.
And, as everyone’s well aware by now, talented beyond belief.

I know you’re gonna think this is way way weird but there’s been a 3-inch tall squishy smiley bright-turquoise teddy-bear with a rose on his noggin and an embroidered whale-tail on his chest sitting on my desk, grinning at me from less than a foot away here, for something like six years now. Maz sent it to me along with a roll of lovely lavender-scented drawer-liner paper. Totally out of the blue.

Once upon a time, back in 2002/2003 maybe, I launched a challenge at one of the other poetry-sites, and she (one of the winners) sent the (even-more-precious-now) goodies as a kind of a thank you for the (totally lame) prize I’d sent off to her.

Several computer-crashes down the line here, I’m sorry to say I don’t have her poem. What a loss. And we never really kept in touch, other than to bump into one another on the boards now and again.

Janice? I remember very well the precise poem you refer to. My guess is was in the Spring of 2008. And it WAS an amazing piece! I would LOVE to read that one again. Totally wildly brain-bustingly different from anything I’d ever seen her write before. It sounded like she was very very much in love.


--Pua, in tears

Pua, Rose found that poem by Maz and sent it to me. Here it is.

Drips from Psyche's Lamp

Tell me you're blind at night and I'll believe you.
Tell me they raise the sky on ten thousand turquoise poles
and I won't quibble. I'll point out the flapping canopy,
and the places in the T-shirt clouds where their points stand out
like nipples. I don't care about lies, about tall tales,*
only about the tourniquet musk of you, the bowstring tight*
around my aorta so my brain pulses harder than my heart,
all thoughts turned to sparkles.
*
Wind me in your elastic*
time so I'll live forever before breakfast, so I'll fall apart*
and curl in a yolk, then break out all gold and new
like a Paschal chick on a daffodil cake. Launch me*
on a crocus sea. I don't care if you're blind at night,*
if the sky collapses on me like a marquee in a squall.
I'll be ova, ovine, big sheep's eyes,*
I'll be nova, novacodeine, noddy as a noodle,
I'll be tangy, tangerine, mango, mandarin,
tango, tanga, bingo bongo bang.

****

And that was my thought exactly, Pua, that poem was written by a woman crazily in love and that is why (not knowing anything about her at the time) I mentally made her "fortyish". But of course a poem lives its own life and when it appears, no one knows when it was written and does it matter, nope. People can be passionate at all ages, but few can convey that emotion so convincingly as this poem does.

PS. I don't know the purpose of the asterisks in the above, I think you can ignore them, it might be Rose-code or Maz-code or something I couldn't possibly guess.

I'm so glad that this moved you too (we are surely not alone) and thx for telling about the teddy bear.

Janice

See a fine tribute to Maz by Alan Wickes:

http://www.alanwickes.org/goodbye_gr...%20Grasshopper

Duncan

Duncan,
I've read it. It's extraordinarily good. Thanks for posting it here.

What Janet said. Thanks, Duncan, and a large thank-you to Alan.

I'm so looking forward to buying, owning, reading, and re-reading a copy of the book.