Charles Bernstein

Charles Bernstein’s most recent poetry collection, Recalculating, came out from Chicago in 2013.

Poem: ‘S’i’ fosse’

Charles Bernstein, 17 December 2015

after Cecco Angiolieri (Siena, c.1260-1312)

If I were fire, the world’d burn;    if I were wind, there’d be tempests at ev’ry turn;    if I were water, watch earth drown;    if I were God, I’d smash it all to worms. If I were Pope, to hell with moral compass,    the christians’d all be flung into a...

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