An Elegy for Ernest Hemingway

(I am lately once again fascinated by the ways in which words become memorials to those lost. I find some comfort in the thought that the urge to process loss in this way is not unique, nor new.)

"…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and

therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

—John Donne

An Elegy For Ernest Hemingway

[by Thomas Merton

from A Book of Luminous Things

Harcourt Publishing 1996]

Now for the first time on the night of your death

your name is mentioned in convents, ne cadas in

obscurum.

Now with a true bell your story becomes final. Now

men in monasteries, men of requiems, familiar with

the dead, include you in their offices.

You stand anonymous among thousands, waiting in

the dark at great stations on the edge of countries

known to prayer alone, where fires are not merciless,

we hope, and not without end.

You pass briefly through our midst. Your books and

writing have not been consulted. Our prayers are

pro defuncto N.

Yet some look up, as though among a crowd of prisoners

or displaced persons, they recognized a friend

once known in a far country. For these the sun also

rose after a forgotten war upon an idiom you made

great. They have not forgotten you. In their silence

you are still famous, no ritual shade.

How slowly this bell tolls in a monastery tower for a

whole age, and for the quick death of an unready

dynasty, and for that brave illusion: the adventurous

self!

For with one shot the whole hunt is ended!