I am the man who cried out and knew,
that first day, I would stay with you,
that even my anger never stood a chance.
You were water rinsing crusted blood
from the stone altar where a chieftain
held a young boy’s heart up to the sun.
I knew I loved you, and I said so then.
But how I love you now makes that a lie.
Click here to read Richard Hoffman on the origin of the poem.
Image: “Seeing Red” by Richard Greene, licensed under CC 2.0
Richard Hoffman has published four volumes of poetry, Without Paradise; Gold Star Road, winner of the Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize and the Sheila Motton Award from The New England Poetry Club; Emblem; and his latest collection Noon until Night, winner of the 2018 Massachusetts Book Award for poetry. His other books include the celebrated Half the House: a Memoir, the 2014 memoir Love & Fury, and the story collection Interference and Other Stories. He is Senior Writer in Residence at Emerson College in Boston, and the nonfiction editor of Solstice Literary Magazine.
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