Elizabeth Clayton

Quiet Sheba Elizabeth Clayton

"Three" is a numerical symbol used throughout literature, especially Holy Scripture, to signify completion, the full whole, the circle joined. In Volume III of Quiet Sheba, the final volume of the trilogy, I have, again, my lamentations, with their similar subjects and themes as different and repeated vehicles of carriage for thought, finishing the construct provided by work already known to my readers. There are death- and triumph, joy beside heavy sorrow, but, more, the very purposed movement within experience, carrying toward a conclusion, that of one's own place, again, at table. We do conclude, as we began, at table, but with more cautious steps and thoughtful strategies; and continuing, beauty remains, for many, for me, the antidote to sorrow, with illness and bitter acceptance, full, still, often. The valediction then, is thoughtful: for morning, it remains, sunrise; for evening it falls gently as twilight. But whether a passage in nature, or the appearing of a memory- a hymn or prayer of any of many methods of closure - these verses finally conclude, a coming back to table, to the feast of life, for we come to know that there is no antidote to truth, and ours, now, is the only life we can objectively know; when living is no longer a reality, it is not. As Stephen Crane's desert beast states, while eating its own heart, crying "bitter, bitter" - we, as the beast, embrace, take into ourselves - eat, drink, - all - for it is the only one we have, and "we love it" - if to the side, to use the French poet, Verlaine's poignant - strikingly powerful - closing words describing the falling seasonal ambiance of the year: "Et je pleure" - (And I weep) - the fullest source of working truth, reason, giving up the response - poetic - beautiful or no: "And I weep." In life, we are not wise, but willful, yet in the holistic view, we live our most sentiment lying over reason, it very now hurting, but with that arrangement with which we look, always, to find the grail, the feast, the peace.