Sylvia

1925 –

2022

Across a space peopled with stars I am
laughing while my sides ache for existence
it turns out is profound though the profound
because of time it turns out is an illusion
and all of this is infinitely improbable
given the space, for which I gratefully lie
in three feet of snow making a shallow grave
I would have called an angel otherwise and
think of my own rapturous escape from
living only as dust and dirt, little sister.

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.

Themes

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The Romantic

I resisted spending money and I held fast
against almost everything, including
washing machines and cheap cars.

I lived by my wits, you know that,
and came back to America
with eighteen dollars in my pocket,
but there were many of us
mostly in Dutch freighters
that unloaded in Hoboken
in a voyage of potatoes and gravy.

Did you ever see how small the seedpod is
for the black locust? I wrote about that.

Gerald Stern

2018

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.

Gerald Stern

2017

Galaxy Love

There’s too little time left to measure
the space between us for that was
long ago—that time—so just lie
under the dark blue quilt and put
the fat pillows with the blue slips
on the great windowsill so we can
look over them and down to the
small figures hurrying by
in total silence and think of the heat
up here and the cold down there
while I turn the light off with the right
hand and gather you in close with the wrong.

Gerald Stern

2017

Poems

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Sylvia

More by this poet

The Romantic

No One

Galaxy Love

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