I Got So I Could Take His Name
poem 293
I Got So I Could Take His Name - meaning Summary
Grieving Toward Quiet Faith
The poem describes a speaker's gradual emotional habituation after intimate loss. Small physical triggers — a name, a floorboard, a box of letters — lose their initial shock, allowing the speaker to perform acts once unbearable. This calmness opens a tentative, unlearned form of prayer and a faint recollection of God as a remote comfort. The tone balances personal resilience with uncertainty about divine intervention in private suffering.
Read Complete AnalysesI got so I could take his name Without Tremendous gain That Stop-sensation on my Soul And Thunder in the Room I got so I could walk across That Angle in the floor, Where he turned so, and I turned how And all our Sinew tore I got so I could stir the Box In which his letters grew Without that forcing, in my breath As Staples driven through Could dimly recollect a Grace I think, they call it God Renowned to ease Extremity When Formula, had failed And shape my Hands Petition’s way, Tho’ ignorant of a word That Ordination utters My Business, with the Cloud, If any Power behind it, be, Not subject to Despair It care, in some remoter way, For so minute affair As Misery Itself, too vast, for interrupting more
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