Issue 27 - Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art

ELIZABETH MACKLIN
The Secret Note You Were Handed by Lorca
It's a song: dormida, sleeping. You're asleep,
and not only "drowsy." The way a true friend
returns after dying—penando, the old dog lost
but returning to leap and to love you: a dream,
not only a daydream, thinking the words
•with leashed feelings.
Was it truly different for you: sun-scorned—lost
in a stolen shadow, as if for a stolen girl,
as if in an envy? He, too, nearly assumed
you'd been longing for something different.
A friend comes back in a dream,
it's funny—the same jacket,
the bright-yellow tie but the same gesture.
And the marvelling wash of the old
affection, humming—a blue-gold snow in between,
like a sun indoors over coolness.
If only—
It's only a dream.
Was it you that hurt him?
The Sadness of Not Knowing
Two years to the minute
(where was I?) when
she was alone, the nurse left, and she
was alone—strong, weakened,
living in hope or
icebound or white-sheet lonely?
I was getting my tickets when this
last minute, last hour
took place. Yes, I see
how it was.
I hope there was a heaven.
"Oh, nonsense" she'd say to the fear
in my thought, she
might have said.
"Don't be afraid.
Don't be afraid
to be sad,
to be there, away
to try, to see."