From the Bridge

Stephen Berg

This time it happened as he crossed
the bridge over the defunct
railroad spur behind the warehouse-
Do it Do it-he counted
the rusted tracks, bouquets
of tall weed, fat concrete sockets
for the feet of the silver iron bridge.
Do it Do it Do it this time
it took that form. He stopped
and cautiously observed all
the things that had been cast there,
shoes, years of paper, bottles,
cans, boxes, car parts, weird shapes.
Which is what men use so why
worry or try to comprehend
anything even that impulse
tolling in his skull, that two-word
delicate command from some
source of revelation and grace
and truth at the core of his mind.
The mind does have a "core,"
where life and death are the same,
where nothing matters, not even
. .. who knows? The day was fairly clear
and not hot, "pleasant" is probably
the word you'd hear if you dialed
the weather, and yet there was nothing
he could do about
the desire of others. Do it
was the result of absorbing
that desire, he understood, as he
leaned on the scabby, dented rail,


a desire to have more, to
know what will come next, to
be sure of why and when.
But how can we have those?
"When nothing you do will do, what
 do you do?" Hisamatsu asks,
 and that's about the same as Do it,
 in a voice not his, not anyone's,
 the anonymous possibility
 of choosing this. Well, he was walking to
 his office, Saturday, to clear up
 work, write letters, think,
 he was trying to connect his pain
 with something that would modify
 his relationship to pain,
 make it no particular person's,
 certainly not his. But all he
 knew was the unqualified
 sweet feeling on the bridge that
 to be alive is not better
 than to lie with the tracks, waste
 metal, paper and glass
 like a thing, and why not, he thought, why not,
 after all it is someone else,
 not me, chanting that puny sentence
 Do it Do it like the crowd at
 a football game, and it must be
 wonderful not to want at all
 like junk decaying on cinders
 that winks when you move your head
 or when the sun's unquestionable presence
 each day merges with the world
 inching off by itself out of reach.