Zackary Sholem Berger

Every day ties another knot
In the net, and I haven’t got
An instruction book, or a thought

Which coaxes to loosening.
Time will unbind. Or the ending
Of time might mean unwinding.

The night angles shut like a lid.
The day collapses, is elided
Into a mesh of what I did

Or did not. Tangled up and closed,
I watch the dipping sun lose
Itself in the basin of chatzos.

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(Chatzos: Midnight according to the definitions of Jewish law. [Hebrew/Yiddish])

 

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A poet and translator in Baltimore, ZACKARY SHOLEM BERGER is a physician by day.