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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jack Gilbert
Jack Gilbert
The author of several collections of poetry, Jack Gilbert has been awarded a Lannan Literary Award for Poetry and the National Book Critics Circle Award...
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FURTHER READING
Related Poems
Here
by Ed Roberson
Related Prose
Coming to the End of His Triumph: A Retrospective on Jack Gilbert
by Dan Albergotti
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Going There  
by Jack Gilbert

Of course it was a disaster.
The 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.



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Copyright © 2001 Jack Gilbert. From The Great Fires: Poems 1982-1992, 2001, Alfred A. Knopf. Reprinted with permission.
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