'Remember' by Christina

This is a beautiful poem 'Remember' by Christina 
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  This poem addresses need of every human being – that of being ‘Remembered’ even after dead and gone. Here the writer writes in first person and so for ease of understanding let’s do it as ‘her journey with her emotions’. Remember is used many times in this poem. At the start it is the ‘stress’ to remember her inspite of her gone away to the land of dead. Her lover will not have her around physically to remind him of her and yet she demands that he remembers her. The line ‘Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay’ is so beautiful as it capsules a powerful act of a lover. When a lover goes say on a errand, work or leaves he looks back to have ‘one last glimpse’ of his love before going away. His mind pulls his body to leave to attend to his work or a reality but his heart wants to stay back and hence doesn’t go away inspite of the ‘body’ having gone. This beautiful clash of duty and love is beautifully summed in this line.

But after death even this can’t be done by the poet and hence feels at lose in holding her lover’s attention. But slowly she comes in touch with reality of death and realises that even if he cries and misses her, she’ll not see, hear or know about that in that land of dead and gone. And hence releases her lover from the ‘need’ to remember her and moves on to ‘detachment’ over her mortal self and it’s need to be remembered and finally says “it’s ok even if you don’t remember me. If you do, that’s fine, even if you don’t, don’t feel bad that you’ve forgotten me. I would rather you smile having forgotten me rather than remember me and be sad about it” with this final release of ‘need to be remembered’ she crosses the threshold of ‘her selfishness to be remembered to ‘her selflessness where as a lover she grows in stature to overcome her need over her lover’s happiness. Ultimately, if her lover is happy then that is it! It doesn’t bother her that she is even forgotten. This is the climax of love.

In this short and simple poem, the poet has essayed beautifully the journey of an individual’s growth in the path of lover – that of being in love for selfish reason to the level where only the lovers’ happiness matters even at the cost of her non-existence!

Beautiful, bravo, excellent!