My Grandmother's Love Letters (by Hart Crane)
Hart Crane, 1899-1932
My Grandmother's Love Letters
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 trembles 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.
* * * *
"My Grandmother's Love Letters" was composed circa Nov/Dec 1919 and first published in April 1920
It also appeared in Crane's 1926 collection White Buildings
For an index of Hart Crane poems in the Crisis Chronicles Online Library, click here.
More Hart Crane is available in these volumes from Amazon:
Posted by Jesus Crisis at 3/24/2009 1:42 PM 
Categories: Cleveland, Writing, 1900s, Crane (Hart), American
Tags: Cleveland Poetry Hart Crane American Literature My Grandmother's Love Letters American Poetry White Buildings
Categories: Cleveland, Writing, 1900s, Crane (Hart), American
Tags: Cleveland Poetry Hart Crane American Literature My Grandmother's Love Letters American Poetry White Buildings
This is a beautiful poem.
It reminds me of my grandmother's diary which my mother has bequeathed to me but which I have yet to read.
My grandma was born in 1900 and the diary is from her teens, before she married my grandfather. The story goes that my grandma had a steady beau to whom she may has still bore feelings after she married and that my grandfather in a fit of rage tried to burn the diary (which must speak of this boyfriend) in a potbelly stove.
My grandmother rescued the diary (the leather cover IS burnt) and she ended up whacking him a few times with my aunt's iron-headed doll for good measure. (My grandma may have only been 4'9 and 90 lbs. sopping wet but you didn't mess with her!)
I haven't read the diary yet because it still seems like such an intrusion on her life. Less so now 20 years after she has gone than when she first died. I wonder though, whatever happened to her missing beau...
Funny what a simple poem will dredge up in your memories. Thanks for remind me of this.
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Thank you for sharing your grandmother's story. I enjoyed it. It is commendable that you have respected her privacy this long. Perhaps the time has come for you to read it - somehow I can easily imagine that you are one person she would not mind doing so. I would love to have my grandmother's diary, though I'm not sure one exists or ever did.
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Charles Robert Hice likes this.
Beautiful. Always thought there was so much treasure in the lives of grandmothers... history, memories, intirguing stories. Thanks for sharing John.
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Indeed! Thanks, Chris.
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