Poetry

Stephen Berg, 1981

You can't frighten me by saying Fate's dangerous,
by talking about the boredom of the great North.
I'm miles from the city now, almost asleep on the grass
    beside you
for the first time,
and I hear everybody I know call this weekend of ours
    Goodybye.
I feel your thighs pressing all along the front of
    my thighs,
my face swims in the hollows of your neck,
my hands are in your hair.
There's the smell of you and the earth

mortal,
    overwhelming!
So we won't see dawn swelling the fields again all that
    easily;
so the moon won't take its old path over us here.
Today I'm still going to give you
things no one else was ever able to

my face and breasts alive in the water
late at night when the stream won't let me sleep,
that sour, childish frown of helplessness
when a star vanishes and can't be brought back.
But best of all this tired, cracked voice, this echo
that was once liquid and young,
that soothed you and made you hear

till you stopped shivering

crows chattering all over Moscow, and made October
fresher than May. Then,
the raised, three-pointed brass stars on the plugs in the
    cannon muzzles
still gleamed. Oh remember me, my angel
of the hope and hopelessness that makes love possible,
remember me
I hate the paralyzing snow.