Aubade: poem by Alvin Pang, with an epigraph from Mahmoud Darwish

Aubade is a poem by Alvin Pang, printed in issue 18 of The Wolf. It opens with an epigraph from Mahmoud Darwish, a line about fearing the silence of a lover's hands.

The poem begins with a forest gone cold overnight, its leaves shivering yellow, maple-red and mauve. The speaker walks the river and recalls leaving the beloved on the absent shore. Parting is known only to the morning, and what was said has turned to dew. The speaker expects grief to teach new names, and ends by placing the words in the vault of sleep, before burial and blood.

Poems in this selection

• Aubade