Poems

Poem by Jeanne Minahan

Music by Andrew Hsu

And can I say what I thought that last night

with you? Where will you go once gone? Going

alone that way, not quite in step, that flight

without wings, no angel, your look passing

knowledge, your passing look, past knowing, rends;

and I, desperate to receive some part of you

as if the end, one supposes, lacks ending,

but knowledge, to return, isn’t the truth:

how you left us beside you without you

where, where we were, where were we? If I’d gone

with you, what harm? In that spare breath I knew

was your ending, I thought, let me belong

to this, I felt your escape, the salt tide rose,

O let me hold the lack and kiss your eyes closed.