Really (First Love)
I know it’s going to end
Not from the start but near the start
When I’m by myself in my room
And know that’s who I am—by myself—
But don’t know what “end” is
I haven’t a clue and feel I haven’t a clue
Although I played the board game when
I was a kid even though my older brother
Tells me I’m still a kid but I know I don’t know
I mean really know, the kind of “know” that I
See sometimes in people’s faces as if
They embraced the basic hurt and never
Left it and never could tell anyone
So it just stayed there in their eyes and around
Their mouths sort of sullen and lost
But I can’t say any of this because I
Don’t know but I intuit it even when I touch
Her breasts and it’s the best feeling—really
A feeling in every sense—I’ve ever had
And that’s just the beginning but I know that
This feeling is going to end, the way one minute
Becomes another and I hate saying goodnight
And going home because I want to swallow time
I want there to be no beginnings or endings
No numbers no dates I just want the feeling
That can’t last because it’s a feeling
And even when I wake up the next morning
And start singing some rock ‘n’ roll I know I’ve
Had it, I’ve found and lost my soul.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
The History of the World
When my uncle tried to throw himself
Into my mother’s grave, lurching toward the dug-up
Abyss and making a thin, strangled moan,
As if time had vanished and left his too-alive
Body to shake in grief’s empty embrace,
I couldn’t move toward him but felt myself
Suspended between embarrassment—what is
He doing?—and awe—he’s going to do it,
A full-force emotional storm in which
Something dire portends something
More dire, something you don’t want to think of
But is right there and won’t let go of you
And never will let go of you, which I
Understood as he collapsed before
The weighty, polished coffin that held his sister
Which had to seem something impossible,
Yet was more real than anything else
That ever had happened in the history of
The world, the total denial of all my
Dumb faith in the two-step of time and his
Also, as he lay on the semi-frozen ground
More like an animal than a person and from whom
I turned away, struck near-dumb by terror,
As if, at last, every fear had been freed.
Baron Wormser is the author of twenty books.