Richard Berengarten (previously known as Richard Burns) was born in London in 1943 into a family of musicians. He studied English at Cambridge (1961-1964) and Linguistics at University College London (1977-78). In 1975, he founded the international Cambridge Poetry Festival, which ran until 1985. He has lived in Italy, Greece, Serbia, Croatia and the USA, […]
Wind keeps counting sandgrains on shifting dunes. He cannot count me. Summer keeps counting stars in clear night skies. He cannot count me. Storm keeps counting rain pellets in her heart. She cannot count me. Light keeps counting things. She won’t ever stop. She cannot count me. Death keeps counting hordes of […]
Clean out the house for springtime. Sweep the floor in patience and in conscientiousness. Let in the wind that’s hammering at the door. Who knows, some day we’ll hammer out a cure for cruelty, corruption, cowardice, clean out the house for springtime, sweep the floor. create a pattern, not caricature of natural justice, […]
Lucky I draw my breath from everywhere. I draw it, draw upon it, give it back. The wind calls and I love it. Meet me there. Breath glows and glories through me as I bear these words on wind. I know. I have the knack. Lucky I draw my breath from everywhere. The […]
The unborn and the dead gather in the head. The dead and the unborn fill plenty’s horn giving and forgiving life for the living.
On my Jew’s hand, born out of ghettos and shtetls, raised from unmarked graves of my obliterated people in Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, on my hand mothered by a refugee’s daughter, first opened in blitzed London, grown big through post-war years safe in suburban England, on my pink, educated, ironical left hand […]
It is the death of children most offends nature and justice. No use asking why. What justice is, nobody comprehends. What punishment can ever make amends? There’s no pretext, excuse or alibi. It is the death of children most offends. Whoever offers arguments pretends to read fate’s lines. Although we must swear by […]
Things constellate and cluster to the norm, and when they press hard in, the core explodes. Form mirrors cóntent, cóntent mirrors form, but when the mirror shatters, then the codes that kept things’ balances, their parity, can hold themselves no longer, and instead the rules that governed this reality splinter in paradigms unheralded by hope […]