The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Poetry - 1. …Vera Brittain Breaks Her Beloved’s Heart by Marrying a Man…

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…Vera Brittain Breaks Her Belovèd’s Heart by Marrying a Man…

(Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby met as volunteer field hospital nurses in the Frist World War. After they came home to London, they lived together until death did them part, even after Vera entered into a marriage to have a child, which the female couple raised together. Despite the purpose, Winifred understandably was heartbroken that she could not be her partner’s spouse in the conventional way. The following forms a Haibun, with Vera speaking about her wedding day, and concluding with a gut-punched poem Winifred wrote the same evening.)

[Winifred walked me down the aisle, and gave me away.] When I stood with G[eorge] before the altar, I felt rather than saw, her standing behind me. […She had] a luminous tenderness which seemed to glow like the rose-pink peonies on the chancel rails as a long shaft of sunlight pierced the tall, high windows.

That night, when all the festivities were over and she returned home to the realization that I was actually married and gone, she told me later that she became violently conscious of the ticking of the clocks in the empty flat. We had quite a number, usually wrong, and I had been accustomed to wind them all. […S]he sat down at the large sitting-room table, which we had shared for our work, and wrote a short poem called:[i]

The Foolish Clocks

Now she is gone but all her clocks are ticking

With gentle voices, punctual and polite.

Their thrifty hands the scattered moments picking

Tossed from the careless bounty of the night.

Oh, foolish clocks, who had no wit for hoarding

The precious moments when my love was here,

Be silent now, and cease this vain recording

Of worthless hours, since she is not near.

—Winifred Holtby,[ii]

1925