In fifty years no one will know.
The heavens will wheel and the trees
drop their berries, but no one will
know what he knows now about love,
the part already passed, the part
around the corner, the part that
wrenched the mind from its spiny cave,
the part that sheltered in the flesh.
No one will know how it all stood
on the verge of oblivion,
the noctilucent air distilled
in the sound of her voice failing.
Eric Rawson lives in Pasadena and teaches at the University of Southern California. He is a former Teaching-Writing Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the author of Banana Republic and The Hummingbird Hour. His work has appeared in numerous periodicals, including Slate, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Iowa Review, and Commonweal.
Links
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