Thanks to the Poetry Daily weekly newsletter that directed me to this extraordinary poem from Kevin Young:
I shall be released
What we love
will leave us
or is it
we leave
what we love,
I forget—
Today, belly
full enough
to walk the block
after all week
too cold
outside to smile—
I think of you, warm
in your underground room
reading the book
of bone. It's hard going—
your body a dead
language—
I've begun
to feel, if not
hope then what
comes just after—
or before—
Let's not call it
regret, but
this weight,
or weightlessness,
or just
plain waiting.
The ice wanting
again water.
The streams of two planes
a cross fading.
I was so busy
telling you this I forgot
to mention the sky—
how in the dusk
its steely edges
have just begun to rust.
Kevin Young
Dear Darkness
Alfred A. Knopf
