Gone is Gone

                               for Lucie Brock-Broido
 

            I was there at the edge of Never,
of Once Been, bearing the night’s hide
 

            stretched across the night sky,
awake with myself disappointing myself,
 

            armed, legged & torsoed in the bed,
my head occupied by enemy forces,
 

            mind not lost entire, but wandering
off the marked path ill-advisedly. This March
 

            Lucie upped and died, and the funny show
of her smoky-throated world began to fade. 
 

            I didn’t know how much of me was made
by her, but now I know that this spooky art
 

            in which we staple a thing
to our best sketch of a thing was done
 

            under her direction, and here I am
at 4 AM, scratching a green pen over a notebook
 

             bound in red leather in October.
It’s too warm for a fire. She’d hate that.
 

             And the cats appear here only as apparitions
I glimpse sleeping in a chair, then
 

             Wohin bist du entschwunden? I wise up,
know their likenesses are only inked
 

             on my shoulder’s skin, their chipped ash poured
in twin cinerary jars downstairs. Gone
 

             is gone, said the goose to the shrunken boy
in the mean-spirited Swedish children’s book
 

             I love. I shouldn’t be writing this
at this age or any other. She mothered
 

             a part of me that needed that, lit
a spirit-lantern to spin shapes inside
 

             my obituary head, even though—
I’m nearly certain now—she’s dead.

Credit

Copyright © 2019 by Mark Wunderlich. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 23, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem

“In 2018, the poet Lucie Brock-Broido died. She was my teacher and mentor, and then she became my friend. This poem, which I dedicate to her, begins by refracting and echoing a line from one of her poems and then continues as I consider the many ways in which she changed my life. While she was dying, she called me, and we had a conversation that lasted a couple hours, during which I understood it was the last time I would speak to her. This poem was my attempt to preserve the memory of that conversation, and say something about how much she meant to me.”
—Mark Wunderlich