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Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

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Bob Vance

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When I know that you are really gone

I’ll find myself facing a fast river,
a river with a voice that carries your name,
but always carries it away.

I’ll shiver through the night before I understand
that I must cross and
that I must cross

alone, and worse, without you who have always been
so good at finding a way. I’ll be alone,
swimming through the sound of your name.

This is after everyone else has gone, left me
with the photographs, the sackful of our things,
stuff that’s heavy and useless

unless it’s shared. Can I step
into that singing as cold, as hard,
as deep as it will push me?

Will it be all that I can keep, a swim
in your syllables, the great deep gulps
a last baptism in you?

As terrified as I am I must learn this
life without you. It is what you would want,
your name, that river, inside me always;

so I’ll find my first step into the river in
to the river saying your name.

 

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