by Charles Bernstein

Wanderers Nightsong
for Marjorie Perloff, after Goethe

Over all the Crests
Is Rest
On high
You hear
Hardly a Breath;
The hummingbirds silent in nests.
Just wait until
You too will Rest.

Wandrers Nachtlied

Uber allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die V gelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.

1776

by Charles Bernstein

A wall with cracks
cares not whose
house is burning as
long as the light
shines through.
If the spoils lead
the spoiled, the
journey would never
begin. Who knows
why the latch’s
left open when the
pig’s turned upside
down? (Fear makes
the burning house
burn brighter.)
The scissors and
the herring are
unreliable partners,
while the broomstick
and the toothache
piss against the wind.
There is a hole in the patch!
Dead center is neither
flush nor foul, but live
targets sing in tune to
the lost freighter.
Then again, the joker
suffers because they
know where truth lies.
The stupider the man,
the more he proclaims
his prowess. As if to say:
Shooting the roof
wounds the rooster
while shooting the floor
riddles the foundation.
In other words, a wheel’s
spoke is worth its weight
in candles, just as cranes
in slow motion separate
goose from cormorant
and tact from elision.
Metaphor, that is, bedevils
facts, just as justice
undermines law.
(Socialism in one
country is like
having a best
friend from Canada.)
—A clown is a
fool or aspires
to be. A fool’s
blessing is better
than a priest’s
despair but not
as useful as a
slap in the face.

by John Baglow

I. BREAK

you will not heal
in your metal works,
a tin box
fashioned so

and the things
you brought
weigh
like too many beads

these years,
lapsing
and relapsing,
a possession

a demon
at rusty controls
steering
over broken stones

cursing,
afflicted,
beset.
i love you.

II. BACKGAMMON

snow wraps
the world tight this evening,

too tight to breathe
after weeks

of watching him drift
like a ghost ship

losing way in the time and weather,
st. elmo’s fire in his head.

just out of reach
like a memory,

his hand trembles
from cut nerves

and his mask is a face
that speaks air.

he throws the dice,
and we begin.

III. DANNY

if there is a future,
the gods likely know it:
what else is there to think about,
or do?

out of their rheumy eyes
they watched my sweet kid fall to earth,
and said nothing.

what, after all, is there to say?
language is for those
so sure of themselves
they must protest.
but those who know what’s coming

are the ones full of doubts:
they can change not a thing
and wonder what they might have done
unchained

IV. HE P URI

because it took four seconds for you
to hit the ground, more or less,
smashing yourself on the concrete face–down
and the greenstone pendant i gave you

and because that time
contains a whole life closed to me,
i am not a poet anymore.
i live in the dark now, casting no shadow.

memories are all my stars
flaming out as they fell,
chunks of half–molten iron and stone
shapeless, broken,

only what they were.
nothing can warm the heart
still beating, beating,
in its wine–dark sea.

under the autumn sky
a tree raises its bare branches
to catch the rain,
and these words hang in mid–air

V. MISSING

i don’t know where the flowers end up
let alone les neiges d’antan,
but there’s new snow on the ground
and a dog is bounding over a wet white hill.

the field below lies draped
over knives of rock
and the dog disappears like the day,
finding its home.

night is thick with cold,
windless, quiet as the moon.
the stars in their cages are pacing,
but free them, and they will fall.

by Kathleen McCann

Rose In A Blue Vase
in memory of Gloria

Dry as old
toast, petals

transmute red
to beige; curl

like ribbon-
candy on

marbled plates
in the grand

old parlors
of long ago.

Rose, in a blue
vase, lamplit.