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    This Moment is Gone
    This Moment is Gone
    This Moment is Gone
    Ebook85 pages39 minutes

    This Moment is Gone

    By George Goode

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    About this ebook

    This Moment Is Gone is a playful exploration of the paradoxes of time, love and death. Although the poems circle these themes throughout, the lyrics were written in diverse forms, moods, tones and voices over 30 years. Poet and photographer George Goode grew up in Virginia but has lived and worked in France for 25 years. His poems and photographs have appeared frequently in Europe and the US.

    "Wild, soft wind in the cypress and me caught
    tieless at the funeral of all former meaning.“
    (Ta Panta Rei)

    "Just as the answer is always coiled and hidden
    in the question, so the uncertainty of our love
    signals implicitly its beginning and its end."
    (The Necessary Error)

    "Reading George Goode's poetry is an invitation to live 'transfixed between beauty and terror' (The Woods). His methods, his own thought, and his voice are all distinctive, provoking original thought in the reader."
    –Michael Mott, author of works including "The World of Richard Dadd," "Woman and the Sea," and "The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton."

    "George Goode's poems pose metaphysical questions, rare in contemporary poetry. He produces lyrics that are wryly romantic and betray a subversive wit."
    –Tony Roberts, author of "Outsiders" and the forthcoming "Drawndark" and "Poetry in the Blood."

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGeorge Goode
    Release dateJan 16, 2014
    ISBN9781311829993
    This Moment is Gone
    Author

    George Goode

    Poet and photographer George Goode grew up in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia and studied philosophy and literature at the College of William & Mary. He also worked in Paris for 20 years as an international tax specialist. His poems have appeared in a number of American and British publications and his photographs in several Paris galleries as well as in Le Salon des Artistes Francais. This is the first complete collection of his poetry. He now lives in Lyon with his wife, the novelist Janet McMahon.

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      Book preview

      This Moment is Gone - George Goode

      The Second Self

      Suddenly you are still sitting there

      when someone in you has gotten up

      and walked out, slamming the door,

      never to be seen again.

      Without a word, he has left you behind.

      Who knows, maybe it was a woman’s smile,

      something you said, a fight at the office.

      Whatever it was, the damage is done,

      that long marriage with yourself is over.

      Now you must get up and try to find him

      in another time zone. Having broken through

      the cocoon that insulated your old future,

      he’s already out there living the authentic life.

      He’s left you high and dry, the bastard!

      He is out there alone at some corner bar;

      he’s hearing all our old songs from the other side.

      He’s walking cold and unfamiliar streets.

      Now he’s pausing to think his own thoughts

      on lanes that are rich and quick with autumn.

      Soon he’ll be forgetting all our old midnight talks.

      You must follow him. There is no other choice.

      Rendezvous

      What fascinates the horizons is our love of one spot.

      They envy us our locality and single-mindedness.

      Hard to imagine, being one thing rather than another--

      the choice that was never made. And yet what is

      identity? Does the rush of wind off the Atlantic

      in storm, the gray mass of wind and water moving,

      know of our special problem or expect our prayers?

      Doubtful. But we slink from the truth like lizards

      slithering into the chinks of rock under a scorching sun.

      We are alone in the world and our mothers with us.

      For the ambiguous skies, God is more imaginable,

      one of its own, someone unbothered by space or time.

      I think of your fingers tight on the wheel, your stoic smile,

      finding your way seaward under these same clouds.

      Feedback

      The last time I said anything to you

      you fell into a fountain to join the pennies

      and green waters covered me head to foot.

      Over the years I have learned to be patient

      with the responses I provoke in others, which is

      like discovering yourself by long division.

      Your eyes always seem to speak out of turn,

      but their thrust implies a trust in the unknown,

      scattering me to the farthest corners.

      Further reflection lands me in a zoo

      of loose numbers, like birds, trying to fly home.

      I have been here before. Like infinity,

      you were late in arriving at this moment.

      Your perspective is precise, reconstructive.

      If I knew how, I’d let you manage my dreams.

      Territorial

      Before everything started you were

      like this: an open pasture dotted

      with milkweed and spreading away

      without limit except for

      one thin black line of fence posts,

      minimal in the expanse,

      forming a slight arch amidst the stubble

      and thick air in the middle distance,

      a constraint that only served to emphasize

      the openness the fields implied

      and to define more surely the perspective

      of the untouchable blue haze

      of the rising woodlands even farther on.

      I loved you, yes, but felt like

      a Tartar hoof-romping over such

      fertile and open-minded possibility.

      Even now I walk your acreage

      not as a proud owner or squire

      but as one stunned, puzzled,

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