#stephen berg

Stephen Berg, from "On This Side of the River", Grief

Stephen Berg

— Stephen Berg, from Grief (1975); “About Love”

                 ----Stephen Berg

(1934-2014)

- Ikkyu (transl. Stephen Berg)

I was always called in early for dinner. It was dusk usually, half an inning to go, I’d hear my mother calling me to beat the dark, everyone would mumble, I’d throw my glove down and      leave. At home, sitting at the table, I’d imagine the score, and the speckled homework book seemed to watch me until I opened it, stared at the numbers, and fell asleep. Damp laundry rustles in the yards of the houses. Everyone was punished like this because our parents worried we’d fall, and missed us, but we always got hurt anyway, or we’d sit for hours sanding the wings of a wood fighterplane until they shined like metal. We climbed walls until we slipped and our legs      broke, our first kisses were so murderous we almost fainted. Don’t forget, this is inside us every day. We want everything, our hands stop too soon, and who are we when a face whispers and opens to us like a wave? The tame grasses of the head, the moist spiral      ear, some water nobody has crossed — you feel yourself leaving, you can’t lift your hands, you stand there, leaving. Stephen Berg

Stephen Berg, Nothing in the Word: Versions of Aztec Poetry