Barbara Goldberg
RIDDLE
Real, mean, a stitch in,
any way you cut it, you're in it,
up to your gills in it, you rise
in it and sink, that great leveler,
you kill it, live on borrowed tock
and tick, once upon a it
begins and then goes by as I
will love you till the end of it.
THE EARLY CHILDHOOD OF GRIEF
And from the loins of Reason and Passion
springs Grief, a surly, birdlike boy
who refuses to cry. No gurgling, no babbling,
no scattershot foray into the dense
and dissonant world, choosing instead
to stay mute, to absorb it all
through his eyes, his parents, their singular
deadlock. Passion has no patience
for Grief, nor Reason, the stomach,
so consumed are they by each other.
Grief grows in time as time grows
in him, each nanosecond adding
to his girth. Soon he's wearing
a polka dot vest on his way to school
where he loses his marbles, is pelted
with dumplings. He finds refuge lying
flat on his back in an open field
where he studies the sky, the inhabitants
thereof, at ease in that recitative,
consoled by the heavenly undertones.
FLOCK
The Lord is my shepherd
He rides a red tractor
His work boots caked
With earth and dried dung
He leadeth His sheep
Beside the green pastures
His black dog yapping
To keep them in line
They bow their heads down
To nibble the clover
And lap still waters
They do not want
Nor fear any evil
Grazing in shadows
Their guttural baahs
Akin to amen
POINT OF ORIGIN
We are all visitors here in a country with no
standing army. There are rain forests
with five species of monkeys. Birds
and fish flashing neon colors. In short
a land of plenty where no one goes hungry,
no movies, no Chinese restaurants, no
karaoke bars. We are all visitors.
What place is this, Eden? But gnats
bite our ankles and we have no repellant,
no pills for depression, no shade
at high noon. At night the stars are
magnificent, but after a while even they
grow old. Or is it us and the sea
which is way too salty. We are visitors.
And the god who oversees our lot, casting
a liquid eye on everything that moves
or is still—steam rising from a red snapper
stew, crushed berries in a makeshift
drinking gourd, is he too a visitor standing
out in a crowd, not speaking the language
or merely one in disguise, staying for good?
FLIGHT
This morning, before any bird stirs, we rise
to a world without particulars, huddled
under covers of slate. By the time the first
tinge of pink stains the sky we are driving
untrafficked roads to the terminal where many
small surgeries are performed. Too soon
you sling your black satchel over your shoulder,
a traveler bound to a land sundered by rage.
I head back to town in my blue caravan
with only the shadow of heft, the echo of parry
and thrust. I see you squeezed in a narrow space,
oppressed by loss and the flesh of strangers.
In fact you are flying home via Zurich
and the cool remove of stewards in starched
shirts, the wilderness of your chest still fragrant
with the smell of sex. Tonight an unfettered
moon will graze terrains of our own forgetting.
Barbara Goldberg is the author of five books of poetry, most recently, Marvelous Pursuits, winner of the Violet Reed Haas Award (Snake Nation Press, 1995). The Fire Stays in Red contains her translations of the Iraqi-born Israeli poet Ronny Someck (Wisconsin University Press, Spring 2002). The recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and numerous grants from the Maryland State Arts Council, her work has appeared in the American Poetry Review, Gettysburg Review, Paris Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. She is the senior speechwriter of a large, nonprofit organization in Washington, DC.
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