All the Love I Had, Which Was Not Enough
All the Love I Had, Which Was Not Enough - meaning Summary
Grief Held in Objects
The poem describes a speaker confronting loss by clutching a dead lover's dress and the relics of their intimacy. He alternates denial and invocation, calling on gods, idols, and chance as he tries to refuse the finality of death. Objects become consolation and accusation: tangible evidence of past life that cannot restore the person. The tone is urgent and raw, tracing futile attempts to hold on amid irreversible absence.
Read Complete AnalysesI pick up the skirt, I pick up the sparkling beads in black, this thing that moved once around flesh, and I call God a liar, I say anything that moved like that or knew my name could never die in the common verity of dying, and I pick up her lovely dress, all her loveliness gone, and I speak to all the gods, Jewish gods, Christ-gods, chips of blinking things, idols, pills, bread, fathoms, risks, knowledgeable surrender, rats in the gravy of 2 gone quite mad without a chance, hummingbird knowledge, hummingbird chance, I lean upon this, I lean on all of this and I know: her dress upon my arm: but they will not give her back to me.
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