Robert Cording*

Robert Cording is a Connecticut poet and professor emeritus at College of the Holy Cross where he taught for 38 years and became the Barrett Chair of English and Creative Writing. His tenth poetry collection In the Unwalled City (Slant, 2022) is an extended heart-breaking elegy for the untimely death of his adult son, Daniel. The book includes both poetry, and the essay of the book’s title. This twinned approach carries us intimately into the achingly honest experience of the poet.

Sydney Lea has said, “In a long and rich career, Robert Cording—indifferent to and transcendent of any vogue—has persisted in addressing what I can only and inadequately label matters of the spirit.” Lea refers to In the Unwalled City as Cording’s “most powerful work to date.”

The latest from Robert Cording is his What’s Possible: New & Selected Poems (Slant, 2026). I have the privilege of having worked with Bob on his earlier compilation — A Word in My Mouth: Selected Spiritual Poems (2013). Some of his poems will also be reprinted in my forthcoming anthology Unto Us a Child is Born: The Kingdom Poets Book of Christmas.

The following poem appeared in The Hudson Review, and is from In the Unwalled City.

At the Cemetery

After my son’s death, October leaves fell
on schedule. Wood smoke blew across a field.

I could find nothing to steer the days.
There was only the lifeless freedom

Of my own helplessness. My future seemed
unendurable, and yet it had to be endured.

Now I meet him at his grave.
A summer thunderstorm announces itself

in flashes and gusts of wind that rip leaves
from the maple tree beside his grave,

where, once again, I think of his birth.
Unplanned, at home, ten minutes from first pains

to his beig here. Just like that, I feel him
rushing into my hands, the weight of him.

I think of this so I do not lose my fatherhood.
Now, as trees bend south to north in the cemetery,

and the storm approaches, groaning as St. Paul
says the world groans like a mother in childbirth,

I groan: Lord, grant me this fatherhood of pain,
do not let grief be finished with me,

if only because it gives birth to my dead son
who is both not here, and not not here.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Robert Cording: first post, second post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of six poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), plus three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is now available from Paraclete Press.