When the Lilacs Last Bloomed I Mourn'd; And with Songs I Perfume the Grave of Him I Love

Clara Maslow, now age 91, is author of a memoir, The Tapestry of Our Lives Torn With Fear, of her husband as victim of the McCarthy witch hunt of the early 1950's, and its traumatic effect on their lives, the lives of their children, and granddaughter. This is her second book, a collection of poems to eulogize, to remember her love of sixty years; A remarkable man, a man unparalleled as a human being. These poems express spiritedly the pain of loss and longing, and the grief of life and love.

A natural poet, a poet of nature. a poet who thinks with her poems her thoughts lie in the language of poetry. She speaks with strong visual images and stark metaphors. The poems express strongly. sensuously the pain of loss, the loneliness of existence and on to the story of love. Poems that often glide into prose with the passion and intensity that drives it in language that is uniformly solemn and tender. Grief plays a large part in this work with poems that speak softly, strongly and tenderly to the lover that has been taken away.

"There is an echo yet, I can hear it still

of his soft voice,

His caressing voice like a summer breeze

Like the flight of moths in the moonlight

Like the warmth of his breast at night

Like the softness of his lips in the morning

But, who can say, there is only silence now

Only the gentle breeze in the hollows echoing

And the shiny memory of his stately person."

(Loving Bern)

This is a tightly focused collection of poems of yearning, and grief, that penetrate the depth of human gaze, the only place that poetry can enter.