Behind the Dark Pines

Which were the exact poems

From which Mahler derived

Der Abschied’s lines, and which

Lines did he add himself?

That last ewig . . . ewig

Seems surely to be his,

Nothing Wang Wei intoned

Or would intone—but which

Might have been the reason

Mahler asked, Won’t people

Go home and shoot themselves?

He never conducted

A public performance

To find out. He died first.

Ewig . . . ewig. The word

Unknots its own meaning

In its repetition

With the music fading.

His wanderer’s farewell

Comes to him, not from him,

And from that which won’t end.