It is Day 786 of the Daily Poems, still battling with Regrets and Uncertainties. Our poet André Mangeot reflects on an unsuccessful first marriage and its dying embers.
Brand
Last night we each drove back alone from our
meeting at Relate: you to your home, me
to mine. Already on that drive I knew
that all the strategies had come too late
to save us, to halt the irresistible decline.
Which is why, once home, I kept a promise
to myself: took off the ring and sealed it
in an envelope addressed to you. Then
drank for both of us; and cried; and slept.
I woke aware of absence; of panic rising.
Found my fingers working, pressing on
the place the ring should be. All I see
there now’s a pale impression: a livid band
more like a burnmark on the tan skin of
my hand. It reminds me of scar-tissue,
grafts that don’t react to light or ever
really heal. Or last night’s dream: that amputee,
his phantom limb as vivid as the real.
The firm, the known, the solid’s gone. How long
before the contours of your face, your shape
begin to blur – like the morning lines of
sleep I’d watch fade slowly from your cheek
or places, dates I can’t hold onto with
exactness anymore? I’m glad we’ve made
our mark upon each other, love; but also
pleased to let the light back in, to watch this
waxy skin blend back to dark. True, we end
with many things we still don’t know. But we
must let them go, my love. Must let them go.
André Mangeot
originally published in Interpreter’s House 1997