There is no longing for the dead,
no remorse or regret of not having
lived a fuller life—the Dead Sea
does not wish to be ocean or river,
a frozen finch perched under a tree
is no more alive than the leaves that
contain it. We are aware of this but
are creatures of ceremony so we do
what we do best when someone dies.
We offer the spring contained within
the winter of our grief—the yolk that
is meant to be some scale of how to
browbeat meaning from our demise.
The truth is, longing is a ruin of one.
The truth is the future is filled with
terrible news & we are all not Gods
but strangers gathering mementos for
a sad goodbye—one of us picking up
where the others leave off—smiling as
if we have a say in a clock’s ticking—
when we are just notes in the margins
& adieu is the unfinished language of
ones who dwell in the chill of goodbye.
Enzo Silon Surin is a Haitian-born, award-winning poet, educator, librettist, publisher and social advocate. He is the author of three previous collections of poetry, including When My Body Was A Clinched Fist (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), winner of the 21st Annual Massachusetts Book Awards for Poetry and the forthcoming collection, American Scapegoat (Black Lawrence Press, May 2023). He is co-editor of Where We Stand: Poems of Black Resilience (Cherry Castle Publishing, 2022), and the recipient of a New England Poetry Club grant, a Brother Thomas Fellowship from the Boston Foundation, a PEN New England Discovery Award and a 2020 Denis Diderot Grant as an Artist-in-Residence at Chateau d’Orquevaux in France .
Surin’s work has been featured in numerous publications including by the Poetry Foundation and in Poem-a-Day by the Academy of American Poets. Their librettos have been commissioned by the Boston Opera Collaborative and their 10-minute play “Last Train” was adapted as a short opera and debuted to critical acclaim in January 2023 as part of a series of Opera Bites.
Surin teaches creative writing and literature and is also Founding Editor and Publisher at Central Square Press and Founder/Executive Director at the Faraday Publishing Company, Inc., a nonprofit literary services and social advocacy organization.
