Good Friday, the day they delivered
that sad bouquet, was the day our cat
ran out on the road and failed to look
both ways. I’d stashed the candy eggs
under the sink, in their pink raffia nests,
safe amongst the household poisons
where the kids had been warned not to go:
on Easter Sunday before first light
I stole outside to hide the loot: the family
of bunnies in gold foil, the high quality
chocolate you insisted on buying—
nothing’s too good for my girls! The lilies,
smacking of humility, devotion, had been
for me—your way of saying sorry, I can stop,
I will lose the needle and spoon today
but I was finished, I was through, said sorry
had been your default setting since the day
we vowed I do. I think, now, I was cruel.
The cat darted out, hit the car, staggered back
as far as our front gate; for a second, I thought
she might have been stunned, nothing more,
though the dribble of blood at the corners of her
mouth was a small grief with a life of its own.
I buried her at the bottom of the garden
where I had tossed your exculpatory lilies.
And where I picture them still. Each new day
above ground is a hard miracle, you wrote;
I hung on every miraculous breath you took
as I stood outside your door at night, dying
to hear you breathe. In the end, it wasn’t me
you turned to, but God: wasn’t love meant to be
more pure than faith, more sacred and enduring?
These days I lean heavy into the wind
and the wind’s blowing hard.
ROOTED IN PROFOUND GRIEF, THIS POEM MAKES US LAUGH WHILE BREAKING OUR HEARTS.
- Do a first reading of the poem. Print out a copy and as you read it aloud, mark up the page to highlight what strikes you most—an emotional charge, a vivid description, an unusual juxtaposition, or anything that feels alive to you.
- We carry poems in the body: how would you describe the emotional effect of this poem, how it makes you feel, physically and emotionally? Who is the poet addressing? Does the poem affect how you think about relationships?
- What does exculpatory mean? What do you think the exculpatory lilies, “smacking of humility, devotion,” represent? Is it significant that the unwanted lilies and the dead cat both end up in the bottom of the garden?
- The poem begins on Good Friday, progresses to Easter Sunday, and ends with God. How does this relate to the story of the speaker’s husband? What do you feel the poem is saying about death and resurrection, about love and faith?
- Listen to Susan Musgrave read her poem (see Useful Links below). How does she vary her long narrative lines—breaking lines in the middle of sentences, adding sudden dashes, semicolons and colons, and using dialogue—to create an uneven rhythm? How might you recite the poem aloud to emphasize this breathless pacing—and what’s your interpretation of what it is designed to evoke (i.e., exhaustion, someone crying and talking, or something else)?
Writing activity: Write a poem about loss or grief as a block of prose. Next, experiment with changing the line endings, and with using dashes, semicolons and commas to create new patterns and emphases so that it’s no longer a prose poem. Then read the block of prose aloud, followed by the experimental, non-prose version, to hear how different poetic choices create unique effects.
Useful Links
Hear Susan Musgrave reading “Exculpatory Lilies.” She explains that her book was inspired in part by a cartoon of a woman unwrapping a bouquet of “exculpatory lilies” from an absolution-seeking husband https://griffinpoetryprize.com/films/susan-musgrave-reads-from-exculpatory-lilies/, May 16, 2023
Learning the Poetic Line, The Poetry Foundation: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/70144/learning-the-poetic-line
An Evening of Poetry with Susan Musgrave, Vancouver Island Regional Library,
April 25, 2023
Musgrave, Susan, "Exculpatory Lilies" from Exculpatory Lilies 2022, McClelland & Stewart. Griffin Poetry Prize 2023 Finalist. Used with permission from The Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry.