End
Love's Last
by Christian Wiman
Love's last urgency is earth
and grief is all gravity
and the long fall always
back to earliest hours
that exist nowhere
but in one's brain.
From the hard-packed
pile of old-mown grass,
from boredom, from pain,
a boy's random slash
unlocks a dark ardor
of angry bees
that link the trees
and block his way home.
I like to hold him holding me,
mystery mastering fear,
so young, standing unstung
under what survives of sky.
I learned too late how to live.
Child, teach me how to die.
Christian Wiman is editor of Poetry Magazine. This poem is from his latest collection, Once in the West. You can hear him read it, beautifully, in his conversation with Bill Moyers on "Love, Faith, and Cancer." Wiman has been living "for a number of years" with a rare and incurable form of blood cancer. See also his poem "After the Diagnosis."
