Two Poems by Marie Howe
Note: these two poems deal with a brother's death
from AIDS
The Last Time
The last time we had dinner together in a restraurant
with white table clothes, he leaned forward
and took my two hands in his and said,
I'm going to die soon. I want you to know that.
And I said, I think I do know.
And he said, what surprises me is that you don't.
And I said, I do. And he said, What?
And I said, Know that you're going to die.
And he said, No, I mean know that you are.
The Promise
In the dream I had when he came back not sick
but whole, and wearing his winter coat,
he looked at me as though he couldn't speak, as if
there were a law against it, a membrane he
couldn't break
His silence was what he could not
not do, like our breathing in this world,
like our living.
As we do, in time.
And I told him: I'm reading all this
Buddhist stuff,
and listen, we don't die when we die. Death is
an event,
a threshold we pass through. We go on and on
and into light forever.
And he looked down, and then back up at me.
It was the look we'd pass
across the table when Dad was drunk again
and dangerous,
the level look that wants to tell you something,
in a crowded room, something important,
and can't
Links to the work of Marie Howe