The distance that develops at this time between George and Isabelle, becomes hard to dislodge.
I was instantly reminded of the lines from the poem, ‘My words are nearly always an offense. Though sincere, his words will be rejected and maligned. He had no means to recognize what Isabelle might require of him – the necessities of her grief….he was not truly capable of consoling Isabelle, as they both knew….no matter how unbearable he found it to wallow in his wife’s misery, he knew it was the better option than making contact with his own grief.Īt one point, George bemoans the fact that nothing he says will be right.
George feels guilt for not telling her the news sooner, but isn’t sure if her reaction is anger at his delay or purely overwhelming grief. The silence coming from Caleb’s room is unnerving and loaded with accusation. She retreats to their son’s bedroom and locks the door. The next morning he finally tells his wife Isabelle. A loss so deep, he could not find the words to speak it. George had not spoken to his wife for a whole day, for upon hearing the news that his son had died somewhere on the battlefields of the South, he had taken off into the woods to come to terms with his loss. In The Sweetness of Water, we see two more parents ripped asunder by their grief. The poem basically becomes a battle of wills. It is an incredibly sad poem about the death of a child, made doubly sad by the parent’s inability to console each other or accept that the other is grieving in a way different to the other. In the seven intervening years, I had completely forgotten the poem, Home Burial (1914). A post where I revisited the six poems that B24 studied during his HSC year. In the early days of my time with Nathan Harris’ utterly compelling, The Sweetness of Water, I was preparing my Robert Frost post. A character, a plot development, a thing said or done becomes linked in your mind to something else, purely by the serendipity of happenchance. An entire day had passed since George Walker had spoken to his wife.Īs so often happens when reading, one book reminds you of another.
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