I came as a stranger; as a stranger now I leave. The flowers of May once welcomed me warmly; a young girl spoke of love, her mother even of marriage. Now all is bleak--the pathway covered with snow. The time of departure is not mine to choose; I must find my way alone in this darkness. With the shadow of the moon at my side, I search for traces of wildlife in the white snow. Why should I linger and give them reason to send me away? Let stray hounds howl outside their master's house. Love likes to wander from one to another, as if God willed it so. My darling, farewell. A quiet step, a careful shutting of the door so your sleep is not disturbed, and two words written on the gate as I leave, "Good night," to let you know I thought of you.
From Schubert's Winterreise: A Winter Journey in Poetry, Image, and Songs by Wilhelm Müller. Copyright © 2003. Reprinted by permission of the University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.
The divorced mother and her divorcing daughter. The about-to-be ex-son-in-law and the ex-husband's adopted son. The divorcing daughter's child, who is the step-nephew of the ex-husband's adopted son. Everyone cordial: the ex-husband's second wife friendly to the first wife, warm to the divorcing daughter's child's great-grandmother, who was herself long ago divorced. Everyone grown used to the idea of divorce. Almost everyone has separated from the landscape of a childhood. Collections of people in cities are divorced from clean air and stars. Toddlers in day care are parted from working parents, schoolchildren from the assumption of unbloodied daylong safety. Old people die apart from all they've gathered over time, and in strange beds. Adults grow estranged from a God evidently divorced from History; most are cut off from their own histories, each of which waits like a child left at day care. What if you turned back for a moment and put your arms around yours? Yes, you might be late for work; no, your history doesn't smell sweet like a toddler's head. But look at those small round wrists, that short-legged, comical walk. Caress your history--who else will? Promise to come back later. Pay attention when it asks you simple questions: Where are we going? Is it scary? What happened? Can I have more now? Who is that?
From Bat Ode by Jeredith Merrin. Copyright © 2000 by Jeredith Merrin. Reprinted with permission by The University of Chicago Press. All rights reserved.
When the bass drops on Bill Withers’ Better Off Dead, it’s like 7 a.m. and I confess I’m looking over my shoulder once or twice just to make sure no one in Brooklyn is peeking into my third-floor window to see me in pajamas I haven’t washed for three weeks before I slide from sink to stove in one long groove left foot first then back to the window side with my chin up and both fists clenched like two small sacks of stolen nickels and I can almost hear the silver hit the floor by the dozens when I let loose and sway a little back and just like that I’m a lizard grown two new good legs on a breeze -bent limb. I’m a grown-ass man with a three-day wish and two days to live. And just like that everyone knows my heart’s broke and no one is home. Just like that, I’m water. Just like that, I’m the boat. Just like that, I’m both things in the whole world rocking. Sometimes sadness is just what comes between the dancing. And bam!, my mother’s dead and, bam!, my brother’s children are laughing. Just like—ok, it’s true I can’t pop up from my knees so quick these days and no one ever said I could sing but tell me my body ain’t good enough for this. I’ll count the aches another time, one in each ankle, the sharp spike in my back, this mud-muscle throbbing in my going bones, I’m missing the six biggest screws to hold this blessed mess together. I’m wind- rattled. The wood’s splitting. The hinges are falling off. When the first bridge ends, just like that, I’m a flung open door.
Copyright © 2014 by Patrick Rosal. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on April 18, 2014. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.
Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse unreturn’d love,
But now I think there is no unreturn’d love, the pay is certain one way or another,
(I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return’d,
Yet out of that I have written these songs.)
This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on February 14, 2013.
[for Ishion Hutchinson] The thing about entertaining them, about keeping their company, about fraternizing, is you must remember they are bloodless and have many faces, though it’s easy enough to walk in sunlight, where either you or they become invisible, never together seen; easy to get in bed with them, to bed them, to be seduced by them— listing in their own dominance. Remember what makes one human, animal, is not the high road but the baseness in the heart, the knowledge that they could, at any moment, betray you.
Copyright © 2011 by Dante Micheaux. Used with permission of the author.
I have lived in your face. Have I been you? Your mother? giving you birth —this pain whenever I say goodbye to thee —up to now I always wanted it but not this
Used by permission of the author.
"You" have transformed into "my loss." The nettles in your vanished hair Restore the absolute truth Of warring animals without a haven. I know, I'm as pathetic as a railroad Without tracks. In June, I eat The lonesome berries from the branches. What can I say, except the forecast Never changes. I sleep without you, And the letters that you sent Are now faded into failed lessons Of an animal that's found a home. This.
Noelle Kocot, "The Peace That So Lovingly Descends" from Sunny Wednesday. Copyright © 2009 by Noelle Kocot. Used by permission of Wave Books. All rights reserved.