Deze week overleed de zanger van The Silver Jews, David Berman. Zelfmoord. Behalve fantastische liedjes was de man ook zeker geen onverdienstelijk dichter. “You know Louisville is death, we’ve got to up and move / Because the dead do not improve…

Hier een gedicht van hem, dat hij in vrede mag rusten:

Snow Poem

Walking through a field with my little brother Seth

I pointed to a place where kids had made angels in the snow.
For some reason, I told him that a troop of angels
had been shot and dissolved when they hit the ground.

He asked who had shot them and I said a farmer.

Then we were on the roof of the lake.
The ice looked like a photograph of water.

Why he asked. Why did he shoot them.

I didn’t know where I was going with this.

They were on his property, I said.

When it’s snowing, the outdoors seem like a room.

Today I traded hellos with my neighbor.
Our voices hung close in the new acoustics.
A room with the walls blasted to shreds and falling.

We returned to our shoveling, working side by side in silence.


But why were they on his property, he asked.