Brenda Najimian Magarity: On the Eve of the Death of Carl Moosoolian

A tardy goose honks its way back to its watershed;
night is a hand’s length and breadth away.

Love escapes somewhere in the distance;
a bullfrog croaks a somber warning, throwing

in the towel for the night between
stars laying their silvery stitchery in fallow air;

and the moon, whose patience has been stirred with a
knife, surrenders momentarily to a spider-like mask.

Pinkish webbed veins stream over that once proud face;
in this stark silence there is but one conclusion:

There will never be another you or me, we shall
exist as Poe’s raven declared, “Nevermore.”

Only the complexion of this night’s air and stagnant
sky shall survive. Though the moon under heavy guard

tries to whisper encouragement, the embroidery
of her dark robe patterns the itinerary of life’s

journey; and this I know; love shall turn itself
inside out, comb the earth’s gravity for a place to

hide, then fade away forever. Desire casts no spell
upon that which can be depended upon. Tonight,

even wicked stepmothers hold their hoary breath
and cross their crooked fingers. The wish for

morning has a severe way of manipulating us into
compliance, all of us with some good, some evil.


Even those with too much of one or the other
shall never forget the solitude of a hopeless

paradigm of stars crested in irregular sequence
at the mouth of the moon. There is no way to judge

the sun when one fears never seeing it again.
We beg for the sun and his potent majesty

to mediate any error of space or time that elapsed
between the dread of days gone marching through

this splendor of irrevocable harm. Love is an
endangered species soon to become legend or myth

like the unicorn, bold, brazen – horned spectacle
of virtue. Error transcends momentary fear of grace.

The water is too shallow for the goose; he dreads
the thought of leaving at dawn. How can

we blame him? He mercilessly plucks out his own
strength in the night until only his feathers remain.

Brenda Najimian Magarity ©1996
This poem was previously published in Ararat, 1996 and Armenian Town, 2001