A LATE NIGHT FAREWELL

by Indran Amirthanayagam

 

 

 

 

This did not have to happen.

It was not an accident, but 

a lie about costs and audience 

diminishing in the age

of the soon-to-be-built

triumphal arch, but 

then we would not

have heard McCartney

backed up by Colbert

and Costello, other 

musicians and friends 

singing Hello Goodbye,

sixty two years after 

the Beatles played 

on the same stage,

would not have felt

the audience

on stage, on television,

wherever the signal 

traveled, saying 

hello goodbye 

at the same time.

That my friends 

is the DNA

 

of experience, 

the grandeur

containing multitudes,

the contrarie states

of the human soul

and everything 

and every person

from whom I have 

learnt to get up 

despite the sadness,

to break bread 

and link arms,

despite the sadness,

to sing in the wee dark

and to disturb 

the demons and go on 

stronger together

into the new day rising.

 

 

Indran Amirthanayagam writes a Substack. He has just published Isla itinerante ( Editorial Apogeo, Peru, 2025) and White Space Sonnets ( Sarasavi publishers, Sri Lanka, 2025). His other publications include El bosque de deleites fratricidas ( RIL Editores), Seer (Hanging Loose Press),The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil), Powèt Nan Pò A: Poet of the Port (Mad Hat), and Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (Broadstone Books). He is the translator of Kenia Cano’s Animal For The Eyes (Dialogos Books) and Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube, and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions. 

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