Charles Bernstein: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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On Election Day

 

I hear democracy weep, on election day.

The streets are filled with brokered promise, on election day.

The miscreant’s vote the same as saint’s, on election day.

The dead unleash their fury, on election day.

My brother crushed in sorrow, on election day.

The sister does her washing, on election day.

Slowly, I approach the voices dark, on election day.

The men prepare for dying, on election day.

The morning hush defends its brood, on election day.

So still, so kindly faltering, on election day.

On election day, the cats take tea with the marmoset.

On election day, the mother refuses her milk.

On election day, the frogs croak so fiercely you would think that Mars had fallen into Earth.

On election day, the iron man meets her frozen gasp.

The air is putrid, red, interpolating, quixotic, torpid, vulnerable, on election day.

Your eyes slide, on election day.

Still the mourners mourn, the weepers wept, the children sleep alone in bed, on election day.

No doubt a comet came to see me, fiery and irreconciled, torrid, strummed, on election day.

On election day, the trespass of the fatuous alarm and ignominious aspiration fells the

       golden leap to girdled crest. 

The tyrant becomes prince, on election day.

Neither friend nor foe, fear nor fate, on election day.

The liar lies with the lamb, on election day.

The last shall be the first and first sent to the back of the line, on election day.

The beggar made a king, on election day.

“Let him who is without my poems be assassinated!” on election day.

Let he who has not sinned, let him sin, on election day.

The ghosts wear suits, on election day.

On election day, sulfur smells like beer.

On election day, the minister quakes in fear.

On election day, the Pole and the Jew dance the foxtrot.

On election day, the shoe does not fit the foot, the bullet misfires in its pistol, the

        hungry waiter reels before steadying himself on facts.

The grid does not gird the fiddler, on election day.

Galoshes and tears, on election day.

The sperm cannot find the egg, on election day.

The drum beat becomes bird song, on election day.

I feel like a nightmare is ending but can’t wake up, on election day.

 

(November 4, 2008)

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Charles Bernstein is the author of Near/Miss and Pitch of Poetry. ROOF recently published The Course, a collaboration with Ted Greenwald. University of New Mexico Press has published a facsimile reprint L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine, a volume of related letters, as well as the late 1970s collaboration Legend. He lives in Brooklyn.  [For more information on, and poems by, Charles Bernstein, see the Poetry Foundation.]

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Comments

[Don Berger]

Great sweep is right! Charles shakes hands with Whitman and then sails across, on, under, over, through and around his own wide green fields.

[Terence Winch]

Yes, he does!  Thanks for the comment, mon ami.

[Chris Mason]

Great poem! I read it yesterday and then last night I had a dream in which 800 people wrote comments on this page, that's how good the poem is. I stand by tht prediction.

[Terence Winch]

Thanks, Chris. May all your dreams come true.

[Karen Sagstetter]

Great great poem. Thank you hi

[Terence Winch]

Thanks for commenting, Karen.

[lally]

bam!

[Lawrence Welsh]

Fantastic. Bernstein has kept me coming back over the years. And this isn't LANGUAGE at all, or perhaps it's all language. It's like an elegy or a responsorial psalm. It makes me feel alive and hopeful as I get to vote soon in a run-off election in El Paso. I'll never forget it. Finally, I had no idea that we share the same publisher, the University of New Mexico Press. I can't wait to get his new books. I'll order them today. Thanks, Terence, for keeping it fresh and free.

[Terence Winch]

Lawrence---thanks for your take on the poem.