THE POETRY OF BREAKUP
… This accident
that was my life will have its witnesses:
now, while the world lies wholly motionless
and sorry in a crapulence of stars,
now is the hour one rises to address
the ages and history and the universe:
I swear you’ll never see my face again.
—Denis Johnson, “After Mayakovsky”
Small comfort that we are not drowned.
Beached and flapping, run aground,
we wake as fresh as children do. Morning’s misty, noon’s a ghost.
Rain falls farther up the coast.
Checkout time is half-past two.
Lovers lie here safe and sound.
Small comfort that we are not drowned.
—Maxine Kumin, “Tell Me, Black Heart”
I give up my clothes which are walls that blow in the wind
and I give up the ghost that lives in them.
I give up. I give up.
and you will have none of it because already I am
beginning again without anything.
—Mark Strand, “Giving Myself Up”