John Freeman’s “Memorial” speaks to someone who has died, but it hardly treats them as gone. The speaker puts the dead at the center of an intimate, almost fierce connection: the vast October sky and the deep tree roots are nothing compared to the height and depth of shared thought. The person being remembered doesn’t need to be called back from far away, because they are already tangled around the speaker’s spirit. The mood is solemn and intense, but not hopeless. There is grief in the “dark thought,” yet also a startling sense of presence. The dead are described as quicker and brighter than a living brain, burning through conscious darkness with a light beyond ordinary thought. It’s a poem about how memory and love keep someone radically, almost painfully, alive inside us.
Memorial — Summary
The wild October sky Rises not so high, The tree's roots that creep Into the earth's body thrust not so deep As our high and dark thought.
Yet thought need not roam Far off to bring you home. The sky is our wild mind, Your roots are round our spirits twined, To ours are your hearts caught.
O, never buried dead! The living brain in the head Is not so quick as you Burning our conscious darkness through With brightness past our thought.