Daniel Hoffman

Going

Your time has come, the yellowed
light of the weary sun
wavers in the foliage.
It’s no use, no use to linger.
So, goodbye, day. See,
the shadows join each other
as the air turns shadow
and the light fails. You
are gone, gone into the ghostly
light of all my days, of all
my hungers only partially assauged,
of all desires
which in the rush of hours
I reached and stooped to grasp.
They’re gone, receding like the light,
like the shadows, receding
into subsidence, to come
again as the day comes,
as the night
comes, bringing its own
going in its coming
again, and again.

DANIEL HOFFMAN has published several volumes of literary criticism and, to date, nine volumes of poetry. His collection Brotherly Love, first published in 1981, will be reissued this spring by the University of Pennsylvania Press and has been adapted as the libretto for an oratorio by Ezra Laderman.

“Going” first appeared in our Spring 2000 issue and was reprinted in The Pushcart Prize XXVI: The Best of the Small Presses (2002).

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