Four Poems about Pride and One About Lost Love

My mother, Marie Schmitt Ely died from leukemia in April of 1946, when I was barely 5 years old. In 1933 she graduated from High School in Michigan and moved to New Mexico with her family. The move led to a broken romance with a young man who remained in Michigan. She wrote several poems about it, reflecting on how her pride troubled that relationship.

During the last few months of her life she packaged her poems, perhaps hoping that I would eventually learn from them.

Here are four poems about pride and its impact on loving relationships

In December of 1934, three months after she moved from Michigan and recognized that her romance was ending, she wrote

Love is Strange

It is not profound to say
That love is strange,
But it seems to me that way
At such close range.

Love is hell, they told me then –
But I said “no”.
Now there’s more within my ken: -
I know it’s so.

Love is pain – deep, silent pain,
Which no one knows;
For love is pride, in whose train
No ripple shows.

But love is living splendor
A libation;
And to you, my dear, I tender
Adoration.

December 11, 1933

At some time later, she reflected on how her pride interfered:

OLD LOVE, REMEMBERED

Rain – lovely, lyrical rain
With its surgical knife-edge of pain;
Old memories wakened to life;
Moments of peace and of strife –
Strife? Yes – bittersweet mingled with sweet:
One moment his all at my feet,
The next, in his pride and mine,
Blinded a bit by that sweet heady wine
Of spring, and of love, and of youth,
He’d ignore what we both knew for truth.
Did I say “he”? Then I lied;
It was I as well in my pride
Who, in heedless disdain of my fears,
Turned our joy, some few times, to tears.
But what matter those brief interludes?
There were other and rapturous moods
When no other beings existed,
When no other lovers had trysted,
When our love was the one and the only –
Do you wonder then that I’m lonely,
That I wish for his strong arms around me,
For his tender love to surround me?

Love – Perhaps like an April rain
Joyous, a bit fitful, a trifle insane,
Whose each drop as it pelts my face
Brings back like an ache – his embrace.

Then in 1934 she burned their love letters

Flaming Words

Flaming words – lost in flame –
Like the love from whence they came;
Ardent, eager, quickly spent,
Not to long duration lent.

Letters – lost in tongues of fire;
Love – just physical desire;
Friendship, liking, deep-built trust
Soon consumed by flames to dust.

Marie Schmitt
1934

Later in 1934 she met my father. In this poem she offers up her pride

I touched your lips
With mine –
What people call –
A kiss.

But in that touch –
That kiss –
I gave to you:
My love,

My tenderness,
My trust
My confidence,
My pride;

Abased myself
To you,
And bared to you
My soul.

To answer me
You said,
“Two things I want
With me:

“A sunset sky
We say;
An orchid, white,
Fragrant,

“Pale and lovely
You see,
I called them both
‘Marie’”

Again, I laid
My heart
Upon your lips –
A kiss.

Marie Schmitt
November 19, 1934

It is one thing to give up an attachment to one's pride. It is another to do it. This was written a year and a half after she and my father were married.

SILENCE
Silence has so many sides –

It may be warm and comforting
With closely lapping waves of light
That break in gentleness;

It may be lonely,
Curt and cold
As pointed as a quill.

When beauty breaks upon my eyes,
I feast in stillness,
Rapt and awed;

When someone’s sadness makes me sad,
My throat knows that hushed strain
Which stills my futile words.

Silence has so many sides –

A dagger thrown to hurt and maim;
A wall to guard our pride,
A moment when I see myself
In truth as bare as winter’s trees;
An anxious hour of waiting,
When no sound can break
The stillness of my heart –

Silence has so many sides.

Marie Ely
12/28/39

Fifty Eight years later, I can look back, say thank you and begin to understand what she meant.

Comments

[J.A.L.]

Beautiful...the poetry and the heart-felt display of her talent...you do her honor.