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Louis Simpson

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Alex Amon

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When We Two Parted by George Gordon Byron

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When We Two Parted by George Gordon Byron

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Kate Waid

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So, we'll go no more a roving
    So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
    And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
    And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
    And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
    And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
    By the light of the moon.

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Mallory Edwards

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it is you who leaves. So I set out / to read for signs of imminence,

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after The I Hate to Cook Cookbook (1961)

How scattered I am: post-spouse, with company coming;
in Florida in my earthquake gown, in my eelskin slingbacks

and electric mink stole. I tried to make
puff paste with sweating hands; butter

in the KitchenAid, covered in Everglaze;
apocalyptic looking and no one to stall.

Now egret feathers and alligators and gas
are gone; polar fur coats are all vintage

or bottle jobs and the corn is crawling even in the Bracken
and the Glades. But I'm up and dressed, at least; I make

of this doctored lambskin a dish of myself: big hair,
lippy, a little bit lush, maybe even horny. I'm going

to breathe in and replate the take-out
again, shake cocktails. I'm going to spread swampy,

an idea, a mangrove of the air.

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Company - How scattered I am: post-spouse, with company coming;

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There was a time I could say no one I knew well had died. This is not to suggest no one died. When I was eight my mother became pregnant. She went to the hospital to give birth and returned without the baby. Where's the baby? we asked. Did she shrug? She was the kind of woman who liked to shrug; deep within her was an everlasting shrug. That didn't seem like a death. The years went by and people only died on television-if they weren't Black, they were wearing black or were terminally ill. Then I returned home from school one day and saw my father sitting on the steps of our home. He had a look that was unfamiliar; it was flooded, so leaking. I climbed the steps as far away from him as I could get. He was breaking or broken. Or, to be more precise, he looked to me like someone understanding his aloneness. Loneliness. His mother was dead. I'd never met her. It meant a trip back home for him. When he returned he spoke neither about the airplane nor the funeral.

Every movie I saw while in the third grade compelled me to ask, Is he dead? Is she dead? Because the characters often live against all odds it is the actors whose mortality concerned me. If it were an old, black-and-white film, whoever was around would answer yes. Months later the actor would show up on some latenight talk show to promote his latest efforts. I would turn and say-one always turns to say-You said he was dead. And the misinformed would claim, I never said he was dead. Yes, you did. No, I didn't. Inevitably we get older; whoever is still with us says, Stop asking me that.

Or one begins asking oneself that same question differently. Am I dead? Though this question at no time explicitly translates into Should I be dead, eventually the suicide hotline is called. You are, as usual, watching television, the eight-o'clock movie, when a number flashes on the screen: I-800-SUICIDE. You dial the number. Do you feel like killing yourself? the man on the other end of the receiver asks. You tell him, I feel like I am already dead. When he makes no response you add, I am in death's position. He finally says, Don't believe what you are thinking and feeling. Then he asks, Where do you live?

Fifteen minutes later the doorbell rings. You explain to the ambulance attendant that you had a momentary lapse of happily. The noun, happiness, is a static state of some Platonic ideal you know better than to pursue. Your modifying process had happily or unhappily experienced a momentary pause. This kind of thing happens, perhaps is still happening. He shrugs and in turn explains that you need to come quietly or he will have to restrain you. If he is forced to restrain you, he will have to report that he is forced to restrain you. It is this simple: Resistance will only make matters more difficult. Any resistance will only make matters worse. By law, I will have to restrain you. His tone suggests that you should try to understand the difficulty in which he finds himself. This is further disorienting. I am fine! Can't you see that! You climb into the ambulance unassisted.

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There was a time I could say no one I knew well had died. This is not to suggest no one died. When I was eight my mother became pregnant. She went to the hospital to give birth and returned without the baby. Where's the baby? we asked. Did she shrug?

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This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on July 16, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.

"'Thou askest, O my friend, a song to-day,' opens Mary Toles Peet's disarming offering for a Deaf friend's wedding. Here we catch a fleeting acknowledgment of Peet's role as one of the Deaf community's poets laureate, someone friends and organizers of Deaf events could depend on to compose and present a poem, often in American Sign Language (ASL) translation but sometimes, problematically, orally. Like most Deaf occasional poets of the nineteenth century, Peet did not pursue mainstream literary publications. We are fortunate that she was so often asked, as the idea of addressing her own community had excited her talents in ways that the idea of a larger, hearing readership never did."
-John Lee Clark

Mary Toles Peet was born in 1836 in Greene Township, Erie Country, Pennsylvania. Her poems were collected posthumously in Verses (Fanwood Press, 1903). She died in Washington, D.C., in 1901.

Trusty, dusky, vivid, true,
With eyes of gold and bramble-dew,
Steel-true and blade-straight,
The great artificer
Made my mate.

Honour, anger, valour, fire;
A love that life could never tire,
Death quench or evil stir,
The mighty master
Gave to her.

Teacher, tender, comrade, wife,
A fellow-farer true through life,
Heart-whole and soul-free
The august father
Gave to me.

Then Almitra spoke again and said, And what of Marriage, master?
And he answered saying:
You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

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To a Bride - Thou askest, O my friend, a song to-day;

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Man and Wife - Tamed by Miltown, we lie on Mother's bed;

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So, we'll go no more a roving
    So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
    And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
    And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
    And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
    And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
    By the light of the moon.

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Ashlyn Mattingly

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We live on a hillsideclose to waterWe eat in darknessWe sleep in the coldestpart of the houseWe love in silenceWe keep our poetrylocked in a glass cabinetSome nights We stay uppassing it back andforthbetween usdrinking deep