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Stephen Berg is the author of numerous collections of poetry and translations, including 58 Poems (2013), Here (2014), and Steam Rising from a Full Bowl of Rice: Zen Master Dogen: Versions (2013), and has been awarded the Frank O’Hara Memorial Prize and a Columbia University Translation Prize. Berg has taught at Princeton and Haverford and is a professor of humanities at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

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Lament

by Stephen Berg
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Seek everywhere, down streets, in boxes, closets,
files of paper, rooms where you left a comb,
toothbrush, or glove, find wrinkled letters, photos,
handwritten earnest phrases, custom suits,
a backyard where a couple in their twenties—

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Reader Comments

  • Thanks for this, Stephen. I wanted to say that the title,...
  • Thank you for publishing this. This is a beautiful narrative poem,...
  • For once, a poem that actually speaks to me, that found...
  • I send this to my father, now ash, spread out I...
  • That about sums up my own childhood too. Thank you,...

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