The End
By Brian Turner
The moments before
may be when you realise
you are hearing yourself
clearly for the first time,
are aware of how much
one wishes we knew about
how to start at the end
and finish at the beginning,
and had learned early on
that when someone
sets out to wound, humiliate
you deliberately, you
should pity them, for they
know not how wounded they are.
• Brian Turner lives in Oturehua. His collection Just This (Victoria University Press) won the Poetry Award at the 2010 New Zealand Post Book Awards.
