Vol 2 No 1 2008
Margo Berdeshevsky
"This must be what I wanted to be doing,/ Walking
at night between the two deserts,
Singing." (W.S. Merwin, "Air")
You're Sumatra
You're Sumatra and I'm Paris.
You're skeleton and I'm le Pont Neuf.
How did I dare to stand with your tired
monster , stare,
wash my eye in your precious water,
hold out my careful,
catholic hand?
The one rooftop your fiends left rooted
holds your trust in surrender, Sumatra, perfume
of rust, and amber, and salt, and jasmine,
new sea-blood for the living cell and nuclei,
and detritus, and calm.
I came to your splayed skin, your knee, to learn
danger, old island. You're Sumatra and I'm Paris.
Sunday morning before the forsythia, here.
A prune branch riotous with inner-flesh-toned
blossoms. The return of the gun and the red fish,
there.
©Margo Berdeshevsky
Poems by
Margo Berdeshevsky