Say goodbye at a border, a barrier, a checkpoint
fenced with metal gates.
Come back to these spaces. Gather all possessions.
Or don’t say goodbye. There is no measure to hold
minutes when the river has arrived.
The Mekong has made its way. Everyone crosses
with marrow of one another.
Bombs shred open veins of gardens and fields,
missiles among homeless,
stateless wandering wreckage of imported wars.
From one country comes one government
with one means.
What cost for public service of bystanding eyes?
What debt to wake the blood?
Breeze solidifies with night jasmine in the cold.
At the separation, refuse to say goodbye.
Do not concede the acceptance of this end.
Whatever the trajectory. However the reckoning.
“Departures” copyright © 2025 by Mai Der Vang. Reprinted from Primordial with the permission of the author and Graywolf Press. All rights reserved. www.graywolfpress.org
Mai Der Vang is the author of Primordial (Graywolf Press, 2025), Yellow Rain (Graywolf Press, 2021), and Afterland (Graywolf Press, 2017). Her honors include the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, an American Book Award, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, the First Book Award from the Academy of American Poets, among others. The recipient of a Guggenheim and Lannan Literary Fellowship, she teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Fresno State.
