On “Renascence” and Reopenings

In junior high and high school, my favorite poem was “Renascence,” by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Millay wrote “Renascence” when she was only nineteen years old, which might explain why I found it so appealing when I was also in my teens. Something in its emotiveness spoke to my adolescent angst.

The poem begins simply enough:

“All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood”

And from that mundane beginning, Millay moves from observations of nature to the oppressiveness of human suffering. At the end she returns to the ecstasy of living. In the 214 lines of the poem, she takes us from life to death to rebirth. It is a poem of faith, of hope, and of joy.

Some fifty years after I first read this poem, I still do not quite understand how the weight of the infinite sky brought Millay to taking on the pain and sorrow of all humanity until she felt her own mortality as well. And yet, a part of me feels these things also. The emotion behind her words rings true, even when the specific description and metaphors may not.

I have reflected on this poem recently as our society begins to reopen after fourteen months of shutdowns, masks, and fear. We have all experienced our own anxiety and seen the suffering of others nightly on television. We have all contemplated the death of loved ones, and even our own death. The constant news reports emphasize the dispassionate and inexorable progress of the virus. It has been more relentless and overpowering than what Millay described. We have realized our insignificance in the universe, just as Millay did.

We will never bring back the people we lost to COVID-19, and many others still suffer from long COVID. But there is a joyousness in the faces I encounter these days—many of them now without masks. Vaccinations are available throughout the U.S. and families and friends can gather again.

Here in Kansas City, the mask orders have been lifted. Some retailers still require masks, but that’s all right. Now that my second shot is three weeks behind me, I feel free to go where I want. I’ve been to a restaurant for the first time since March 2020. I met with friends for a social event without masks. I went to Mass in-person for only the fourth time since the lockdowns began. And I sang!

Throughout the pandemic, I have tried to walk around the neighborhood several times a week, whenever the weather and my schedule permitted. Recently, with the blossoming of spring—the bright green leaves against the azure sky—I have felt my favorite lines of “Renascence”:

“God, I can push the grass apart
And lay my finger on Thy heart!”

The joy and awe of those lines summarize for me the entirety of Millay’s description of rebirth, a rebirth the seasons bring us every year. And this year, I feel it more fully than most springs, even as I remember that many parts of the world are still in the throes of death.

That seems to be the human condition. We never all feel hope and joy at the same time. There are always those in the midst of grief and despair, whether private or societal. Each emotion comes to each of us in its season, and we must try to remember the good in bad times and the bad in good times. Death comes after birth, and rebirth comes only after death.

How are you feeling as the pandemic eases? Or is it not easing for you?