I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, Like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.

Alfred Tennyson, “In Memoriam”

 

Half a sin, you said. But Alfred, hear:
the half that will not disclose
is not a fault — it is the closeness
the soul draws round what it holds so dear.

What Nature hides she does not lose.
The grief that will not come to words
stays warm, unspent, just out of reach,
the held breath language cannot reach.

You feared the silence in the line.
I’ve come to read it as the place
the dead keep speaking face to face,
not in the word, but in the spaces between,
in the hesitation, in each small curve,
for in the half concealed, the soul still yearns.

We are both right. And both half-heard.

 

5/6/2026