Ever

Meghan O'Rourke

Never, never, never, never, never.
—King Lear

Even now I can’t grasp “nothing” or “never.”
They’re unholdable, unglobable, no map to nothing.
Never? Never ever again to see you?
An error, I aver. You’re never nothing,
because nothing’s not a thing.
I know death is absolute, forever,
the guillotine-gutting-never to which we never say goodbye.
But even as I think “forever” it goes “ever”
and “ever” and “ever.” Ever after.
I’m a thing that keeps on thinking. So I never see you
is not a thing or think my mouth can ever. Aver:
You’re not “nothing.” But neither are you something.
Will I ever really get never?
You’re gone. Nothing, never—ever.

About This Poem

“I wrote ‘Ever’ as a kind of self-punishing exercise after thinking about the perfection and tragedy of Lear’s line ‘Never, never, never, never, never’—uttered as he realizes his daughter Cordelia is dead. It’s a line that pierces the soul (and is in perfect trochaic pentameter). So I thought about how I might, in a sonnet, play on that line as Shakespeare riffed on a theme in his sonnets. The speaker of this sonnet is in denial about loss—her shock prevents her from being able to speak it, and leads her to obsess over the concept. And who can really speak loss?”
—Meghan O’Rourke

Meghan O’Rourke is the author of Once (W. W. Norton, 2011). She is a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and teaches at Princeton University and at New York University’s Creative Writing Program.

Photo credit: Sara Shatz

Poetry by O'Rourke

Once

(W. W. Norton & Company, 2011)

"Grief Work" by Natalie Diaz

"That This" by Susan Howe

from "Blue Dark" by Deborah Landau

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July 13, 2015