Louis Bourgeois

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Hymn for Kora

The end becomes you.
Dust thickens on the road,
when you pass through the purple evening.
The wind blows colder,
the grass lies down and quails.

The red deer has been dead
for a long time now.
You pass your hand over it
and it gets up,
but it does not breathe.

The trees have been dead trembling.
They do not like the silence
as you walk through them,
as you move away from them and say:
“How long ago did you die?”

The forest is empty—your hair
has never been blacker.

Louis Bourgeois was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is primarily a poet, but he has published translations, fiction, memoirs, poetry and interviews in over two hundred magazines and journals in North America, Europe and Asia. He graduated from Louisiana State University with a BA in English and was the first graduate of The University of Mississippi’s MFA program in Creative Writing.  He is the Executive Director of VOX PRESS, as well as the Program Director for the Mississippi Prison Writes Initiative.