David Bromige 1933-2009

(Ed Coletti & David Bromige Petaluma Poetry Walk September 2007)

Just a Very Few of My Favorite David Bromige Passages

Step out of that frame
Tear free of that backing
It's your only chance
To start establishing your big mistake

(from " 'Then he was led, blindfold, into the predicate' ")

3 Ways with the Same Sentence

I've been looking for perfection
but still am permitted to sleep
on our mattress with its
broken spring next to the
completion of your body.

Not so much lately since
circumstance has seduced me
away from the initial fervor but
in youth as with a mission
invited debauchery & remember
incidents of tenderness &
sanity that baffled me.

Godknows—god of my fathers
I have questioned all I could
yet still found means to live
when I woke up this morning nor
hold much hope things won't
once I am gone continue.

I Read This Someplace

The lyre bird
amid the eucalyptus
listening for every sound he hears
to trip him into sound he makes.
He has no call or song
his own. He imitates. Each time
he utters something chances are
it is his soul that speaks.

The Death of Poetry

The bad news came.
You got thinner with each day
and less substantial.
The end in sight,
painful breathing from the next room
came and went throughout the night,
and with morning
much to our surprise
you were standing in the doorway
wearing a headdress of duckfeathers
and an oversize pair of British Wellys.
Your were off to compete in the triathlon.
We said, "That's poetry for you!"


2 Brief Passages from Spade

In these pictures of Cambridge
They'll say, 200 years from now,
"Look at that old bridge—& Bromige,
There, next to that wall...Now
This guy here I don't know what
He's on, he cd talk very well w/o
Slipping up, but it never meant
Anything, a phantom language"...

I wish I shared my co-author's
Faith in afterlife upon afterlife.
We will never see, hear you
Again, dear Thom (ed: Gunn).
Never write this poem again.
And you will never read it—
Lucky you!


The Crux

We assume
what we can leave unsaid,
What can we assume —
one day we'll be dead.

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Rockpile Michael Rothenberg (also see below) reminds us of his wonderful world tour with David Meltzer. Check out this link.