10 May Clouds After Rain by Charles Bernstein
also profligacy
strong wind breaks even the mightiest bow
and lots of us twigs on the way
even the most difficult path
is a beginning
every lie’s a kind of truth
truth is never sincere
the greatest care is a form
of ontological abandon
hope wounds eternity
feelings are heartless
trust is cozened by cruelty
before every step
is a step
the hardest step is
before the first
first step is standing still
what the kind lack in intelligence
the intelligent lack in kindness
and those both intelligent and kind
are a laughingstock to all
the happy are out of tune with their grief
a lost soul is at home in his homelessness
every child regrets her innocence
what is
just ahead
is almost
behind
essence without existence
is like politics without history
reality is not
behind a veil
it is a veil
the thing itself
is not in disguise
it is disguise
grief is tonic to despair
About the Poet
Charles Bernstein is an American poet, essayist, editor, and literary scholar. He is the Donald T. Regan Professor, Emeritus, Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania. Bernstein is one of the most prominent members of the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E or ‘Language’ movement of poets and writers. In 2006, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2019 he was awarded the Bollingen Prize from Yale University, the premiere American prize for lifetime achievement, given on the occasion of the publication of Near/Miss.
Bernstein was the winner of the 2025 America Award of the Contemporary Arts Educational Project, for a lifetime contribution to international writing.
From 1990 to 2003, Bernstein was David Gray Professor of Poetry and Poetics at SUNY-Buffalo, where he co-founded the Poetics Program with Robert Creeley and Susan Howe. A volume of Bernstein’s selected poetry from the past thirty years, All the Whiskey in Heaven, was published in 2010 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. The Salt Companion to Charles Bernstein was published in 2012 by Salt Publishing and Charles Bernstein: The Poetry of Idiomatic Insistences, edited by Paul Bovê was published by Duke University Press and boundary 2 in 2021.
Bernstein is the author of nineteen collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Topsy-Turvy (University of Chicago Press, 2021) in which this poem appears. He is also the author of eight collections of essays, the most recent of which is The Kinds of Poetry I Want: Essays & Comedies (University of Chicago Press, 2024).
Related Event
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- Charles Bernstein returns to Buffalo, where he was David Gray Professor of Poetry and Poetics at the University at Buffalo and co-founded the Poetics Program with Robert Creeley and Susan Howe, to participate in FOR LOVE: A Centenary Symposium for Robert Creeley (1926-2005), a celebration of the life and work of Buffalo’s beloved poet Robert Creeley sponsored by the UB Poetics Program. Charles will join in Symposium Evening 2: “Creeley as Colleague, Collaborator, Teacher, Mentor, Poet” for a roundtable discussion with Charles Bernstein, Elizabeth Willis, Kyle Schlesinger, Aaron Lowinger, Benjamin Friedlander, Isaac Jarnot, and Joseph Conte at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, May 22nd at UB Anderson Gallery, 1 Martha Jackson Place, Buffalo, NY 14214.At 7 p.m., a reception will follow.At 8 p.m. the evening will continue with a series of community readings and reminiscences about Creeley in Buffalo sponsored by the Poetics Program in collaboration with Just Buffalo Literary Center. All the events are free and open to the public.
The Poem of the Week feature is curated by literary legacy awardee R.D. Pohl.