Near and Far
Mark Halperin

Starting to leave a country feels like
abandoning a lover or being abandoned by one.
Lethargy overwhelms you at night.
When words seem evasive, you insist
on flirting with salesgirls practice in conversation,
you say though who will understand, there
where you pass unnoticed
as here you never have? You prepare

excuses for a look of distance
that will follow you, the part you left behind.
Maybe it's someone else, and you sense
his ghost-like limbs, their phantom pain.
You practice loneliness with a convert's blind
devotion. There's nothing left but to resign
yourself to fate, to love
and its absence, long walks and sighing.

ISBN 1-882983-55-6
37 pages/$9