Erica Jong

Driving Me Away

Driving me away
is easier
than saying 
goodbye--

kissing the air
the last syllable
of truth being always 
two lips compressed 
around
emptiness--

the emptiness
you dread
yet return to 
as just punishment
just reward.

Who 
loved you
so relentlessly?
Who lost you
in that howling void
between infancy
and death?

It is punctuated
by the warm bodies
of women,
who hold you for a while
then run
down that echoing corridor,
doing
as they were told.

I Sit At My Desk Alone

I think of you always
on Sunday afternoons,
and I try to conjure you
with these words--
as if you might 
come back to me
at twilight--
but you are never coming back--
never.

The truth is 
you no longer exist.
Oh you walk the world
sturdily enough:
one foot in front
of the other.
But the lover you were,
the tender shoot
springing within me,
trusting me with your dreams,
has hardened
into fear and cynicism.

Betrayal does that--
betrays the betrayer.

I want to hate you
and I cannot.
But I cannot 
love you either.

It is our old love
I love,
as one loves
certain images
from childhood--
shards
shining in
the street
in the shit.

Shards of light
in the darkness.