"WAIT" by Josh Radnor
Last spring in a span of two-and-a-half weeks I lost two people in my life to suicide. A few months later I discovered a poem by Galway Kinnell called “Wait,” which he wrote for a student who was contemplating suicide on the heels of a failed relationship. I was very moved by the poem so I wrote a song inspired by it. I think of this as a collaboration between me and Galway Kinnell (some of the words are his and some are mine) It’s been a tough week for a lot of people and it’s my hope that this song might offer comfort to someone in a dark place.
Here’s the full text of the original poem and a link to the BrainPickings piece where I discovered it:
https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/05...
WAIT
Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven’t they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.
Wait.
Don’t go too early.
You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.