Donald Berger
I Forget
I Forget
Everything you’ve never read of mine scolding itself for not being published,
The chestnuts whacked the glass when the bus went through the branches in the fall,
There was a metal statue of a wild boar in wild grass at the rotary in Dahlem,
There were a lot of real ones in the ditch next to King’s Avenue, Koenigsallee.
At the café outside Literaturhaus once, Monika Rinck took at least 85 things from her pocketbook
and covered the table with them, and then she did it again.
In German I told someone I was from England.
Internal life’s rich, too, but couldn’t compare.
This slip of paper says go over the mosquito bridge, the Gate to get to it, and then the
Templehofer riverbank.
Gyorgi Ligeti over dinner used to ask questions like, can machines think.
The street, at many times, loved my eyes, like it was letting them lead.
There was world weight and world force whether the rain would come, like someone whispering.
I stood 20 feet from the real Holy Grail in Valencia but never saw the thing.
I first thought Christian Rothman’s painting that I loved was called The Funny Bachelor not The
Merry Widow, but he himself said it could be either.
The ads on the outside of the buses carried questions like Who has the overview? Who brakes?
Who makes place?
Why, I asked Ulrike Draesner once, in German, Why is your English better than mine?
The strength of that green around the patio and the push of the music, both of these organically
sad and exceptional,
I was only afraid when I didn’t have words for what I meant, or when the words I had were wrong.
