BENSON BOBRICK earned his doctorate in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. His many books have been featured on the front page of The New York Times Book Review, widely praised in both academic and popular journals, and published in translation in over twelve lands. In 2002, he received the Literature Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Two distinguished poets, Galway Kinnell and Robert Pinsky, served on the Award Committee that year. Its other members were: Hortense Calisher, Horton Foote, Ann Beattie, and Russell Banks. Recently, Bobrick’s poems, crafted over many years, have begun to appear in numerous periodicals in the United States and abroad. He lives in the State of Vermont.

He Chose To Part

He chose to part. Alone in his new place,
he sought to set things up his own way. All
the furniture he set against the walls
to open up an airy middle space
(for wasn’t it more breathing space he’d sought?)

His solitude, now reinforced around,
freed him to himself. Even so, he found
how much also of emptiness he’d wrought.

Night of the Soul

I had to get out of my room and walk.
I walked to where even late the streets
are not so desolate one might not meet
on an outside chance, someone and talk.

Shadows thrown by lamplight from the curbs
merged indifferently from gray to black.
I sought in phantom faces, looking back,
the still promise of one reassuring word.

But something in my purpose was not true.
Strangers passing strangers turn aside
in fear, in dark estrangement, or in pride.
I must have been looking for someone I knew.

A Colloquy of 3 Epigrams

1. On Venus Having Her
Exaltation in Pisces
Astrologers, mark well my birth,
the Ides of March, its double curse:
that whom I most love will betray
my love, yet love blind all my days.
2. A Sin Each Year
A sin each year was punished in me when
I went away to boarding school for ten:
that made the Decalogue: before I came
to sinning as a man, I knew the shame.
3. To My Books
You, who have willed my good,
always the best of friends,
I have, as best I could,
willed yours, by my amends.

SCEL LEM DUIB*

Oh, my news is poor:
stags roar;
winter descends;
summer ends;

cold high blasts;
a low sun
on a short run;
sea fast.

Bracken rigid,
reddening;
overhead
wild geese crying.

Cold has iced
the wings of birds.
Death in life.
That’s the word!