After Shakespeare, A New Valediction: Saying Goodbye Again To My Friend Amanda Onofrio Poem by Dennis Ryan

Saturday morning, July 30, 2022; Friday morning, April 28, 2023 at 5: 50 a.m.

--for my friend Amanda Onofrio

'What a piece of worke is a man! How Noble in reason! How infinite in faculty... The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me—nor woman neither...'
--William Shakespeare, from Hamlet, the main character Hamlet digressing upon human nature after many encounters with members of the court at Elsinore

How did Shakespeare in his grave wisdom apprehend,
foresee and call you forth five-hundred years hence?
How do such work? ‘Tis simple—he had seen you before
in many masks, guises and stages of history, in his own
contemporaries writ large, called forth on stage The Globe.
You are and were one of the players, just one more betrayer
at times: Goneril taken for Lear's Cordelia, Regan who would tug on my beard had I had one—you outdo, excel them all
as your betrayals are too up close, too personal, the friend
who blindsided me. What do you know now that you did

not know then? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing, save duplicity,
that same false face you know now that knew me then.
It has been almost five years since you departed, since
I first composed that other valediction, on the occasion
of your leaving, to see you off and on your way back up
north, read to you over a meal on that final afternoon.
What more would you, could you have had me do?

I gave you "everything" if this hyperbole somehow fits—
I gave you books you gladly took north—poetry by Marilyn Hacker and Adrienne Rich, several others—but my note-filled copy of Carol Gilligan's In A Different Voice, which I had
taught at university, you took without asking; earlier, I gave
you vegetable plants, flowering okra, to begin your garden; those cups of coffee you readily consumed daily; things unremembered. Remembered—I did it all most willingly.

I read to you, from John Donne, George Oppen, Pound
and others, and you listened intently, taking everything in.
Almost five yearrs now, and not a word, not a cheep from you,
despite your promises to the contrary, those made in person
to stay in touch, to predict the outcome of Premier League
Saturday's and Sunday's—you for the Reds, and me
the Gunners. Why tell me such lies when, beforehand,
you knew you had no intention to follow through on such
promises? Why blindside me as you have knowingly done?

You know I have strong feelings—now piles of rejection,
dejection and loss. It would have been better had you
been honest, told me to my face—the feelings of rejection
far shorter in duration—but you could not woman up,
face me, your fears of your own resulting (toxic shame?)
far greater than any concern you had for me—none
whatsoever it seems—so you did it all on the sly, done
at distance, in silence. This now is what I make of you:
two persons, one familiar, one not. Carol Gilligan has

written tellingly of the two of you: make sure you read that
chapter, that part. Now it's time to have done; with you;
I write this poem to exorcize these feelings lying repressed
for so long, despite my optimism, my best intentions to see
you in a better light—in light and not shade— better than
you really are, these your repayments for my kindnesses—
your lies, duplicity, deception and theft. Yours. Take them.
Look into your mirror: this is you. Look into your mirror:
this hurt you knowingly cause. Thank you. Merci. Merci.