I must learn to fall in love with the word 'goodbye'.
I've tried to use it too coolly for too long;
and I've also hated it, as if it didn't care for me.
I must learn to fall in love with 'goodbye'.

It has a cold light, uninvolved, of massive gravity.
You can't look into its heart, it's too bright,
but at its edge the radiance grows softer
– and that, that you can bear.

I must learn to fall in love with the word 'goodbye'.
If it is a sun, I must learn to look away.
It has its own hot light, profoundly involved, of strange gravity.
You can't look into your own heart for long, it's too bright;
and at the core, there's the seething, rustling sound of burning;
and only one other element can quench that fire –
the cool, dispassionate element of 'goodbye'.

I can't tell you how beautiful it is –
this is the very word 'goodbye'.
I can't tell you how odd it is, wavering, uncertain:
it holds out the possibility of ends,
and yet pretends to be a kind of link
that chains us to greeting.

And I think, in time, I will become the word 'goodbye'.
It will no longer rest outside me
but remain, unsaid, inside every word that I say to you.
I will speak about things, but they will be half-moons,
each of them, and even the visible half will be clouded;
and the dark half of each word will be 'goodbye'.

It has no children. It can never have children –
is that terrible? It has great spaces –
inches, grams, miles – and in the white corner of an eye,
moonlit fields of wheat, Kansas, and a calm, interstellar beauty
in which the sublime unkindness of life falls quiet,
and gapes at us, and even, for a moment, seems kind –
but it is not kind: it is just another word for 'goodbye'.

This is the last poem you will ever read – the ultimate one.
And you think: what a relief,
never to have to deal with stupid poems again.
This is the last one:
it is simply the word, 'goodbye'.

It will have no children – is that beautiful?
Once understood, you need never read a poem again –
it will use all words up, dry them up,
hollow them, harrow them, make them useless –
and, most useless of all, the words, 'I love'.

Perhaps this is why it is wonderful – this simple word, 'goodbye'.
It's strange, impartial, a metal that could be bronze or gold,
but whichever metal it is, forms an axe,
sometimes with two heads – yours and mine –
sometimes with a caress – instinctive and homely –
sometimes just with a cawing of rooks in the evening,
a deboned, incinerated sound
which is, impossibly, no one's.

It is mine. And it will be mine forever.
Everyone is adult who really walks in the light of 'goodbye'.
Gold, beaten, its metal enters the kiss, halving it perfectly.
The moon, too, it halves – constant, inconstant –
and one half it gives to you.

I want to be very gentle with that word, 'goodbye'.
Autumn moon, it cuts the world in two, even with a smile,
and one half you must always keep.
I'll learn to respect that word, and its decision;
I will always say goodbye forever.

And when I've said goodbye to you
that will be like one stone falling on another stone.
There will be a dull clicking sound that doesn't echo at all
even though the air is clear;
perhaps there will be a little dirt, moonlight, fences, roads;
but everything else will be luminous, and barren, and sterile;
and inside me then, for the very first time,
I'll hear my heart beating, and each beat will sound
like one stone falling on another stone –
and one stone, I must always keep.

It isn't mine. It will never be mine.
I want to be brusque with this word – goodbye –
bully it, sneer at it, rough it up a little –
naturally, it's hard to bear its composure,
and the fact that it will never be home.
I want to be negligent with this word, casual,
I don't want the air to be clear, but fuzzy, facetious and noisy,
full of fat life that goes on and can't
be cut into neat halves, neither of them love.
I want to insult the word, 'goodbye'.

Sometimes, though, it's too late: the air is clear,
the night quiet, and even a kiss
sounds like two stones, one falling against another;
and there's not even dirt, or the crying of gulls –
just a clicking sound – casual, almost facetious –
and in the luminous, unbearable calm stretching around you –
Galicia – as if under bare moonlight,
you see there are so many stones,
and they're skittering and clicking against each other with each step
as if in a field you're walking across
though it isn't halved, and there is no other side.

This is the mercy of a field of stones: it becomes the adult human heart,
and you know that you must walk across it forever.
It becomes the ground, and possesses no horizon.
And then the word 'goodbye' has a dull, echoless sound,
and every greeting grows harsher and harsher.

I can't tell you how beautiful it is.
I can only keep walking.
I must learn to fall in love with that sound, the sound
of the word 'goodbye' –
even if that love is secretly hate.

This is the longest word I will ever say.

Copyright © Michael Ayres, 2002.