Going There

By Jack Gilbert

Of course it was a disaster.

That unbearable, dearest secret

has always been a disaster.

The danger when we try to leave.

Going over and over afterward

what we should have done

instead of what we did.

But for those short times

we seemed to be alive. Misled,

misused, lied to and cheated,

certainly. Still, for that

little while, we visited

our possible life.

Copyright Credit: Department of, "Going There" from Collected Poems. Copyright © 2012 by Department of. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. .