Poetry Discussion: My Grandmother’s Love Letters

This poems is one of my favs. I'm wondering what you think of it. I really want people to address the stanza that starts "Are your fingers long enough to play..."

Richard February 20, 2016 2 min read

My Grandmother’s Love Letters

by Hart Crane

There are no stars tonight
But those of memory.
Yet how much room for memory there is
In the loose girdle of soft rain.

There is even room enough
For the letters of my mother’s mother,
Elizabeth,
That have been pressed so long
Into a corner of the roof
That they are brown and soft,
And liable to melt as snow.
Over the greatness of such space
Steps must be gentle.
It is all hung by an invisible white hair.
It tremble as birch limbs webbing the air.

And I ask myself:

“Are your fingers long enough to play
Old keys that are but echoes:
Is the silence strong enough
To carry back the music to its source
And back to you again
As though to her?”

Yet I would lead my grandmother by the hand
Through much of what she would not understand;
And so I stumble. And the rain continues on the roof
With such a sound of gently pitying laughter.

###

This poems is one of my favs. I’m wondering what you think of it. I really want people to address the stanza that starts “Are your fingers long enough to play…”

Author
Recent Posts

Richard

Richard Everywriter (pen name), founder of EveryWriter, is a publishing industry veteran with 25 years of experience. He holds degrees in Writing, Journalism, Technology, and Education, and has taught writing and literature for 20 years.

Follow him on Twitter, and check out our Submissions page.