Agape

Hudson Review, The, Winter 2003 by Brock, Geoffrey

If I happen to see a kid picking on his younger brother, and if the little one looks cowed

beyond what the moment warrants, then I figure the one knocks the shit out of the other when the parents are absent. Big brothers are such small gods. Seeing a scene like that, I feel again the familiar itch

to get the kid alone somewhere, lean far into him with my eyes, and slap him hard-and when the whir

in his ears dies, when fury, shame, shock and fear all rise, to whisper that is how he feels every time,

and leave him there, the way my father (youngest of two) left me, agape, the last day I beat my brother.

GEOFFREY BROCK received the Raiziss/de

Palchi Transalation Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets for his translation of Cesare Pavese's Disaffections: Complete Poems 1930-1950 (Copper Canyon, 2002). He is currently a Wallace Stegner

Fellow in poetry at Stanford.