Poem as Imagined Conversation with Anne Sexton

You said you were tired of being 
brave; and that you walked 

away from your mother's
funeral procession in a haze—

Did you mean equal parts 
belief and disbelief? Maybe

I am wrong to read 
every poem insinuates

itself upon my own experience.
But in this case I don't need to revise: 

in another country, people die; 
among them, my own kin. 

Some kinds of grief are larger
than cathedrals; even before you enter,

you know your heart 
has been belling its approach and yet 

the sound stops short of filling 
every arch, every vault. I don't know 

if I could ever offer the kind 
of blessing that was timely enough, 

not wanting for more—
neither to give nor to receive.