the same sky will go on reinventing itself...

Lynda Hull

In Another Country


If Baroque were more than a manner
of music, it would be this last afternoon.
Sun, disciplined by hours, moves slowly
across the floor. The shadows of pears
in the basket compose a pattern
described only once. If you spoke now,
it would be a kind of violence troubling
the skin of the moment. We have stepped

out of the past and the future waits
without us. Outside, the wind ruffles grass,
invisibly bending each blade. A single piano note
repeated without variation floats across
the lawn. Naked, we are suddenly strange,
in time again, you are already moving away
from me. Yesterday, we walked

saying the names of streets and trees,
bringing them forever into us. Later,
you came behind me in the doorway, slid
your arms around my waist. I wanted to ask
if you had said everything, but only
said your name. Tomorrow,

it will all be different. Already,
I see you in a hotel room, curtain
half-drawn. You will sit in profile
unfolding the news of another country.
The same sky will go on reinventing

itself. I will put on the clothes
laid out the night before
while the morning stains with traffic.
I will slice grapefruit
and wonder if distance
will give us back to ourselves.


[“In Another Country,” published at Blackbird in 2008, is not included in her three collections and is not found in Collected Poems.]

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Hull's death - fifteen years ago - left a void in poetry... a void I'm not certain will ever be filled. For me, her poetry is as close to perfection as is possible.