On Gazing at "The Goodbye" by Ludwig Knaus

There’s a final time for everything.

A falling off your skateboard,

a bandage to the knee and

kiss-it-better? 

Van Gogh’s harkening a rooster’s crow

with his unpruned ear.

The roar of an ankylosaurus

in the ash, the choking dénouement

of Cretaceous sun.

The last sieg heil! that’s offered

in a bunker. The echo that doesn’t

boomerang to your auricles

like the year before. The last I love you to

your daughter

though you couldn’t have sensed

the man beyond the sidewalk in his coupe.

The definitive moment you called me

fucking faggot. The final first time that

I dove into the lake,

eye-to-eye with the walleye, the wonder

on their faces as I sank beneath their scales

like something severed, weighty,

a slave to gravity’s crush, surmising if they’d

ever see such an astonishing sight again.

Andreas Gripp

August 23, 2026

Ludwig Knaus, The Goodbye (1867)