Poems by Margo Berdeshevsky

Now All Seasons
 
 
Come, my eyes, back in to this that the burned city sees as
me — one skin at a time — 
 
Body I cannot hold any more than love the lover once told me
was like holding water in your arms
 
Love is like holding water in your arms he said so many times and that
stars were the bones of our ancestors
 
I don’t have ancestors or I do — I know I am a wild leaf      no tree 
I have always been afraid of not seeing not loving not being held
 
A skull holds eyes and then does not     mine are nearer the burned
mounds now and the lover     — that one — 
 
And the ones before and after gone from my arms so that
only nights hold me
 
With their loose lid     skin whispering go to the soul
now darling child darling aged
 
Woman be with the soul there is none else to hold you and eyes are
not meant for only hills or graves  
 
But the one like water in my arms the love that cannot be held
the soul that is on a wide slant I
 
Want to see — come, my eyes
back into the water 
 
That  washes me while I am with
its late trees —their blood-letting  
 
Come to me now all seasons — layers
of my skin to be 
 
 
 
                                   You only need one skin at a time.—Laurie Stone
 
 
 
 
 
 
For What Stays
 
(in the months of revolution)
           
 
          The ancient Du Fu 
wrote only two lines: one poem: 
          The View This Spring 
           
                 (his tune) : 
       
         The nation is destroyed,
      mountains and rivers remain.
 
 
       In view today, the falcon,
           whose name, though 
bird of prey, is also pilgrim     hovers, 
robs the starling’s nest,    and the vulture,  
      devours her fractured hour 
 

                    In view
        a haunted street where skin
is the bull’s eye again     skin—the bull’s
       rage,     skin—its breath,
 
 
   A haunted rubble where men came for 
  she-wolves—wood where children have 
lowered in midnight’s tarnish, their thin legs,
        opened. To die out of tune.
 
 
But the view this Sunday is a grandfather’s 
once-upon silver tuning fork, in a new boy’s hand, 
                  held to the wind, 
 
 
    is a man in his last tunnel, humming
                  on the way to God  
 —is God learning one more time, to sing ?—  
 
 
       The view is a garden of stubborn June,
                     bending, breaking,  
          how it insists on flowering — how 
      the peregrine pilgrim dives now
                 in dusk hours of no song.      
                            Keening.
 
     And i practice the ancient’s poem again
                       for what stays— 
  the place where you let go of your body— and your life—  
       and where a mountain and a river remain
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Margo Berdeshevsky, NYC born, writes in Paris. Her newest book is Kneel Said the Night (a hybrid book in half-notes) from Sundress Publications. Forthcoming: It Is Still Beautiful To Hear The Heart Beat from Salmon-Poetry. Author as well of Before The Drought/ Glass-Lyre-Press/finalist for National-Poetry-Series, Between Soul & Stone and But a Passage in Wilderness / Sheep-Meadow-Press, and Beautiful Soon Enough /FC2 /recipient of 1st Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Award. Other honors: Grand prize for Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and the Robert H. Winner Award from Poetry Society of America. Widely published in international journals, kindly see her website: http://margoberdeshevsky.com
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