Where No Friend Survives

WHERE NO FRIEND SURVIVES

From friend to friend
the voice comes,
& the answer
that a stranger overhears
robs him of speech.
The guest is half
oracular.
Nowhere he turns
or runs, caught
in a web
or caught between
two open doors,
is right for him.
The way out west
leads back to Asia,
Asia leads him
into wilderness,
a bitter landscape
where no friend
survives,
no gaze or touch
so tender.
Those who fight
for love,
once living,
know it as a taste,
sweet in the mouth
though distant.
At length, at last,
the friend is double
in your sight,
but turns from you.
The time to come
draws nigh.
And does the poem exist
when there is no one there
to hear it?

Jerome Rothenberg

Posted over on Poems & Poetics

[Written early in 2010 this poem with the dedication “... for those who went before” is the opening page in the newly published Concealments & Caprichos (Black Widow Press, 2010). The death within days of each other of these three poets, Scalapino, Voznesensky and Orlovsky, is a reminder once again of our common lives & destinies.]