Friday, June 17, 2016

FAREWELL BILL BERKSON ~






B I L L     B E R K S O N
1939-2016



Variation



Related Poem Content Details


To no longer perform in broad daylight,
the apple’s a radish for it,
the winter chill a living thing.
But take your brother into later learning:
Let the girls who will smell the buried cloves there.

So I am only beginning to learn what I from time to time forget.
But throw away these childish things!

Barney’s coffin disappeared,
and luckily you said the right thing
for the sky mentioned for the last time.
The little master of small talk
is really the seducer of your every move,
taking you into his confidence the way a cat his mouse.

And still young Lycidas cannot express himself fully.
And: “Everyone is the same,”
even down to his jockey shorts, dolce far niente, as they say.



_________________
Bill Berkson
from Portrait and Dream: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 2009 by Bill Berkson








BIRD IN HAND ~






A plumb-bob book of early blues, make no mistake about it.

Sylvester Weaver
Papa Charlie Jackson
Blind Lemon Jefferson
Blind Blake
Blind Willie McTell
Blind Willie Johnson
Lonnie Johnson
Mississippi John Hurt
Tampa Red


University of Minnesota Press, 2015