A Story
︎︎︎ Matilda Lin Berke
︎ Oct 13, 2025
The poor wandering poet mourns his wife:
not dead, but dying, and half-left behind.
It’s easy to leave when you’re leaving alive.
He cries great tree-sap tears. But he still leaves.
What could I do? he says. Nymphs, cry for me.
Meanwhile, his good friend eats the heart of a deer—
he can, since he paid for it, and since it’s there.
I keep my sadness at a distance. These are things
that happen: someone loses, someone wins.
The poet mourns, yes, but his lover dies.
The hunter returns to play the scene
with a new friend—now, the striptease
of routine. I try to make it new
with disco scions, crustaceans, and you—
a new prehistory of what will come—it will—
the future, resinous, and closing in,
in the hoofprints of a faithful rhyme:
the cruel collusion of language and time.
At my request—at the lobster’s behest—
that Russian story transmigrated west—
and where are you? You might find yourself here:
encased in amber, the abandoner.
not dead, but dying, and half-left behind.
It’s easy to leave when you’re leaving alive.
He cries great tree-sap tears. But he still leaves.
What could I do? he says. Nymphs, cry for me.
Meanwhile, his good friend eats the heart of a deer—
he can, since he paid for it, and since it’s there.
I keep my sadness at a distance. These are things
that happen: someone loses, someone wins.
The poet mourns, yes, but his lover dies.
The hunter returns to play the scene
with a new friend—now, the striptease
of routine. I try to make it new
with disco scions, crustaceans, and you—
a new prehistory of what will come—it will—
the future, resinous, and closing in,
in the hoofprints of a faithful rhyme:
the cruel collusion of language and time.
At my request—at the lobster’s behest—
that Russian story transmigrated west—
and where are you? You might find yourself here:
encased in amber, the abandoner.