The Tear
Feel it drop upon your hand Salt of wounds you understand. Warm as breath. Shattered belief Crystal of a global grief.
Louise Louis
SourceLicence:Public domain (US, unrenewed)
Feel it drop upon your hand Salt of wounds you understand. Warm as breath. Shattered belief Crystal of a global grief.
Four short lines, and a single tear holds all of them together. The speaker asks us to feel a tear falling on our own hand, which makes the moment strangely physical and intimate. It's salt, the same salt as a wound, and the poem says it comes from wounds "you understand," as if the reader already knows this kind of pain firsthand. The tear is also warm, close to the warmth of breath, so it feels alive rather than cold or distant.
The second half widens the lens. The tear becomes "shattered belief," something that has broken, and then a "crystal of a global grief." A crystal is small, hard and clear, yet here it contains a sorrow shared by everyone. The speaker seems to feel both tenderness and heaviness: one person's crying and the world's suffering are the same thing. The mood is quiet, solemn and compassionate, softened by the gentle closeness of that first image.