In Memoriam, 2026

“Dirge Without Music”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.
Crowned with lilies and with laurel they go: but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains – but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

Since 2005, we have included “Dirge Without Music” on our yearly memorial page because it conveys the enormous personal loss of September 11, 2001. At the Yankee Stadium Prayer Vigil on September 23rd, before the final death toll was known, Rabbi Marc Gellman put that grief into words this way:”On that day, six thousand people did not die. On that day, one person died six thousand times.“

Click on the angel to play the song that led directly to naming the restaurant “Windows on the World”.

Click here for the story behind the “Angel of Grief Weeping Over the Dismantled Altar of Life.”

Click here for the transcript of the Prayer Vigil at Yankee Stadium on September 23, 2001.