No One
No one there to remember with me
the election returns of 1931
Hoover losing state after state
Roosevelt getting his speech ready
the first time ever on radio
my father starting to sing in Russian
moving furniture to dance the kazatzka,
nor is there anyone to help me with the words
of a song I sang in Miss Steiner’s chorus
nor anyone standing there with me in the blue
rhododendrons or sitting under the blossoms
of my dying redbud, not even brewing
a Kroger tea bag and reading the leaves.
From Galaxy Love: Poems by Gerald Stern. Copyright © 2017 by Gerald Stern. Used with permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Gerald Stern
Gerald Stern was born in Pittsburgh on February 22, 1925. His recent books of poetry include the posthumous collection Blessed as We Were Late Selected and New Poems, 2000–2018 (W. W. Norton, 2023); Galaxy Love (W. W. Norton, 2017); Divine Nothingness (W. W. Norton, 2014); In Beauty Bright (W. W. Norton, 2012); Early Collected Poems: 1965–1992 (W. W. Norton, 2010), Save the Last Dance (W. W. Norton, 2008); Everything Is Burning (W. W. 2005); American Sonnets (W. W. Norton, 2002); Last Blue: Poems (W. W.