Whose? Who else’s? Who am I kidding?/ The boat’s waiting. No need for oars/ or a wind. I’ve left the key/ in the same place. You know where./ Remember me and all we did together./ Now hold me tight. That’s it. Kiss me/ hard on the lips. There. Now/ let me go, my dearest, Let me go./ We shall not meet again in this life./so kiss me goodbye now. Here, kiss me again./ Once more. There. That’s enough./ Now, my dearest, let me go./ It’s time to be on the way. “No Need,” one of the last poems by Raymond Carver and published posthumously following his death from lung cancer at the age of fifty.