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The Deronda Review a magazine of poetry and thought Vol. V No. 1 Fall-Winter 2012-13
Walls, photograph by Courtney Druz
THE DERONDA REVIEW: Editor: Esther Cameron., P.O. Box 5531, Madison, WI 53705. Co-editor for Israel: Mindy Aber Barad, POB 7732, Jerusalem 9107. Hard copy $6, subscription $12, back issue $4. CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE Hayim Abramson Yakov Azriel Michael Baldwin Mindy Aber Barad Hamutal Bar-Yosef Ma'ayan Or Batt Guy R. Beining J.E. Bennett Ruth Blumert Doug Bolling Marguerite Guzman Bouvard T. Anders Carson miriam chaikin Tom Chatburn Handsen Chikowore Deborah Danan Carol V. Davis Zev Davis Robert Glen Deamer Courtney Druz ellen Nancy M. Fisher Ruth Fogelman Daniel Galef Heather Gelb Calvin Green Gila Green KJ Hannah Greenberg John Grey John F. Gruber Carol Hamilton Charles H. Harper Jerry Hauser George Held Friedrich Hölderlin Gretti Izak Kathryn Jacobs Dina Jehuda Sheila Golburgh Johnson E. Kam-Ron David Kiphen Adelina Klein Sue Tourkin Komet David Lawrence Peter Layton Lyn Lifshin Tziporah Lifshitz Constance Rowell Mastores Daniel McDonell Avril Meallem John Milbury-Steen Michael S. Morris Drew Nacht Cynthia Weber Nankee James P. Nicola B.Z. Niditch Estelle Gershgoren Novak Stanley O'Connor John O'Dell Molly O'Dell Susan Oleferuk David Olsen Ryan Peeters T.P. Perrin Zara Raab Susan Richardson Tom Riley Rainer Maria Rilke Leonard H. Roller Roy L. Runds Robert William Russell Ruth. S. Sager Haim Schneider E.M. Schorb Amiel Schotz Ken Seide J.G. Seidl Steven Sher Steven M. Sloan Zvi A. Sesling Paul Sohar David Stephenson Ruth Stern Michael E. Stone Connie S. Tettenborn Shira Twersky-Cassel Lois Michael Unger Shoshana Weiss-Kost Will Wells Judith Werner Alexis Wolf Harry Youtt Frederick Zydek ______________________________ CONTRIBUTORS' EXCHANGE Since its inception as The Neovictorian/Cochlea in 1996, The Deronda Review
has included a Contributors' Exchange of addresses (surface, email, URL) and
available books. As of this issue, the Contributors Exchange will be a
separate
.html file, and in future will include contributors to past issues as well as
the current one. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Ken Seide's "Neilah #1" was first published in the 2012 issue of Kerem.
Courtney Druz' "The Wander-Root Court" appears in her book The Light and the
Light (2012, www.courtneydruz.com). IN MEMORIAM: IDA FASEL "The righteous shall flourish like a palm tree . . .Even in old age they
shall bring forth fruit; they shall be full of vigor and freshness. . ." (Psalm
90) Since the previous issue went to press, The Deronda Review has learned of the passing of its oldest - in more than one sense - contributor, Ida Fasel, who died January 13, 2012 at the age of 102. Ida Fasel lived in Denver, Colorado, where she had moved in 1959 with her husband, Otto, whom she lost in 1973, and where she had taught for thirty years at the Colorado College for Women and the University of Colorado before retiring. Her passions included ballet, Milton, gardens, angels, and the human future She published 12 collections of poems and two chapbooks; all but the last (Milton on My Mind, finished only a few months before her death) are listed on www.idafasel.com. She was a righteous Gentile and a staunch friend of Israel. Ida Fasel's poems appeared in every single issue of The Neovictorian/Cochlea,
and in four of the eight previous issues of The Deronda Review. The qualities of
her poetry? Keen intelligence, wonder, a rich culture, courage, warm humanity…
All of her contributions to this magazine, up to a few years ago, are posted in
the "Hexagon Forum" section of www.pointandcircumference.com. For a farewell,
let me here reproduce one of the two poems that appeared in the first issue of
NV/C, in 1996. Having been blessed with her presence for so many years, may we
continue to draw on her legacy of "vigor and freshness." -- EC READING DANTE LATE AT NIGHT Strong as winters of spring, jonquil adjacent to snow; secure as small perfect industries of the sea; hidden as psalm numbers behind church columns; suitable as the wooded corner of Wyoming with its stark connections, strange as the familiar making itself known: strong, secure, hidden; suitable, strange, to read so far from where I am on my side of the lamp till I am startled - the shadow your page makes as it turns, the lift of your face in the corner of my eye as you wait for my look to meet
yours. What a blessed crossing, our separate ways, in the love that moves the sun and the other stars. Strong, secure, hidden, suitable,
strange to move lenient within another
motion. To recover quiet. -- Ida Fasel ________________________________ I. Marking Time MARKING TIME
High in the sky two cranes spin and glide with ballet precision as on earth the last summer days slip off like a loosened harness. The forecast is the furrowed clouds may bring rain to a soil raked by fever. I wish the sky to gleam with water, to fondly embrace us and clear up our heated brain so we can look in the mirror and recognize our true self, the one envisioned by our Maker. O let me wake in Monet's garden of flowering azaleas, narcissi, masses of pink, mauve and off-white roses, the air thick with bees, the sky of bright blue marking time, when a year becomes a second like somewhere over the edge of the Milky Way, giving me more time to pray and entreat, to supplicate the Lord to take away my heart of stone. I have known this mood before. But I am becoming more and more desperate. I want my love to be greater and truly substantial; I beg to have the signature of the Holy One etched on my errant heart, on each thought I have, and on everything I write. -- Gretti Izak We had a hard summer this year, Hotter and harsher than usual.
And the journey across the mountains was difficult. For I've come from a distant country; Here is my bread -- Fresh, with a pleasant aroma, when I left But now stale and crumbling. Here is my wine-gourd, which I had filled with cool wine, Now empty, worn and rent. Look at my garments and sandals -- Tattered and torn from the journey.
This is the oath I swore was true, An oath Full of lies and deceit.
For the end of Elul Has pounced upon us And I want to -- I need to -- Make a covenant With You, O Lord, To be allowed into the camp. Even as a hewer of wood. Even as a drawer of water.
Everyone knows That after Elul A person can fall from a cliff, Like the scapegoat to Azazel.
O Master of forgiveness, Adon HaSelichot, If You permit me To be one of the congregation, I will testify Forevermore: The Lord, He is God, The Lord, He is God. -- Yakov Azriel TASHLICH Saying Tashlich between the olive green branches of the willows. I sway with them in unison. Watching over the aqua filled pond in the park. Orange goldfish are swimming in schools. Large groups of them under the muddy waters. Mallard ducks take off in flight on mysterious missions. It feels good sending the past year adrift. Time for facing our inner selves. he cool wind feels refreshing on my face. The leaves are turning yellow on the tops of trees. Fall is nearby. The New Year has crossed the threshold of our doorposts. Welcoming it in with blessings of apples and honey. May we be at the head instead of the tail. May our enemies and obstacles be torn asunder! The Teruah sounds out the day. We must recognize this inimitable cry. Tears well up inside. The Shofar notes are flying out of the blue and white stained glass windows. Crowning the Creator of the World once more. -- Shoshana Weiss-Kost
NEILAH #1
The last prayer I uttered before Neilah had only four words. Help me, God. Amen. But the Gates of Prayer snapped close and snipped my prayer in half, which means I pray that my sigh at least slipped through. -- Ken
Seide [note: Neilah is the closing prayer of Yom Kippur.]
NEILAH #3 The gates of brokenness barely hang on their hinges and stand open. The gates of illusion only seem to close. When the gates of judgment close, they really close; don't stick your foot in. The gates of mercy can tell when you're faking contrition; don't try it. When the gates of eternity open, another opens behind it, and then another, then . . . The entry to the gates of mirrors can't be located. The gates of memory have another name, but it has been forgotten. The gates of change have been reconfigured again; you can't go in that way anymore. The gates of secrets have a way in, and no one knows it. The gates of wisdom never open for some people; sound like anyone you know? This strange pendant that I've worn for as long as I remember, is it a key to my own gate?
-- Ken
Seide
CLOSING DOORS Rain through the woods. Autumn. You could see it in the wind. A yellowing, the broken leaves crookedly drifting. Somewhere in this I am, memories coming and going as though not mine, small boats aimless or driven toward unknown shores. Once I kept a diary. Once I believed in the surety of words as though they could gather even the sun even the moments that hide behind the face of a clock. Now a door is closing pushing back the tomorrows, turning all green things into chimeras a form of sleep a small dying like roots not seen deprived of water. --Doug Bolling NOVEMBER MORNING No winter promise, no dawn glitter of eastern hope this frigid day, a call to look out at the sputtered cries of park geese pretending to fly south again with preparatory clatter before settling once more on Soldier Creek, where the Choctaws watered long ago. My window offers a sweep of gray behind the silhouette of fingers, skeletal and reaching for some escape from this nothing of cold, empty air. -- Carol Hamilton SNOWFLAKES DRIFT Snowflakes drift tranquilly from ashen skies, small remnants of the storm that howled last night in winds whose fury shook the dark with cries of winter's deepening grip upon our town. Now, as morning whispers silver silence, snowflakes drift tranquilly from ashen skies. They layer sheen of white on white across the lawn. Against my door snow piles waist-high. Heavy lifting, alone, can clear my ties to the great outside. But for now I'll watch snowflakes drift tranquilly from ashen skies. Rest is on the land and death -- along with nascent life. These all look the same within cold burn of winter light -- deftly defy my mind's habit of drawing boundary lines. Snowflakes drift tranquilly from ashen skies. -- Charles H. Harper
ON THE SHORTEST DAY OF THE YEAR a woman goes into darkness, past the black ruby roses and is never heard from again. She moved quietly past the bleached grass a December day it got into the sixties. It was a day, foggy and warm, very much like today. It was today. Now you probably think it could be me, it seems there are reasons. But listen, I've never seen, only imagine those tissue thin roses and that last minute before light collapses. A garnet leaf on the pond is less red than my hair blazing, a lighthouse beacon past the trail of petals to bring you closer than you imagine you are -- Lyn Lifshin
AT PEACE
When did nature take this hold Over me and my mood? When did she take me under her wing Like one of the chicks in her brood? The sky is gray flannel and inside my head My thoughts are fuzzy, I think. It seems as if nature is weary as well-- It seems as if we are in sync. She doesn't want to open her eyes-- She wants to stay asleep. She's quiet and pensive allowing me To ponder my thoughts as deep. Everything's muffled and only a bird Sounds through the silence today. Nothing else utters even a word. Background noise fades away. It's one of those days where it threatens to rain, But not a drop falls all day long. It's one of those days where I threaten to change But under blue-gray and overcast skies, My senses as numb as my mind, I can only manage a normal routine: "Hello, how are you?" "Just fine. " So as gray turns to black and another day's gone I ask myself, "What is the reason? " Ah, but nature she knows, as she takes to her rest: "To everything there is a season. " -- Connie S. Tettenborn
RICH MOON, POOR MOON Moon is back again, a pock-marked one-eyed beggar at my window. Through cycles of life, moon drifts -- lost, and sometimes penniless. Still, moon hangs on, hitching by with a smile, existing on mere slivers of sustenance. Camping among the gypsy stars, moon continues to roam. In sympathy, the heavens arrange a periodic crossing of paths with fortune. Moon more than tithes for the favor, giving all to the darkness. Yet, on its richest of nights, moon trades its coin for silver, steals close, gives dreams of treasure. -- Cynthia Weber Nankee
___________________
II. Costs of Living WEALTH White metal, Silver -- Yellow metal, Gold -- Red metal, Copper: All are wealth I'm told; Yet what'll All these buy me When I'm old Or nearly dead -- That a meadow Cannot give Me now, Properly Instead? -- David Kiphen
AND YOU MY FATHER One evening younger than school time, I wandered onto the back porch. Saw my father sitting on the top step. I sat down next to him and asked, "What are you thinking about? " He seemed to look through me. Like for several seconds. Then said, "Just wondering why I am not happy. " For moments I gazed at him. Then, as if to offer solution, said, "I'll tell mother." It seemed right to make that offer. Mother would help when I was unhappy. When I started toward the screen door, he called, "Wait, Jerry." I stopped, but held onto the door latch. "Don't tell your mother." "But why?" (my query). "Don't tell her what I just said to you. Do you understand?" I reassured him that I did. My father turned away and settled into twilight silence. Maybe to watch the purple martins swoop for flying insects. The night seemed flooded with them. I remained near to him -- turned furtive glances his way while the mosquitoes whined. But didn't seem to bother him. -- Jerry Hauser THE BOTTLE OF TEETH baby teeth, dried blood still on them. Sharp still as certain phone calls. None of them crumbling. Labeled. "Rosalyn's 1st lost tooth, July or was it September," kept like diamonds or a flapper dress studded with crystal on silk that falls apart at a touch. Packed away just so she could put her hand on them, as she wanted me to be. She saved every letter since second grade, old jewels, touchstones, hand knit baby clothes, triplicate news clips, every mention of my name as if they were me
-- Lyn Lifshin How she judges me, my child -- well, child no longer. She casts me a wild look, fierce, full of hunger. Her rebellious disquiet, her pitiless truth: What kind of justice is this? Age closes my throat. We shared a bed half a decade. She gives no quarter. I suckled her; for whose sake, did I nurse till I ached? Yet she accents all my fears, measures atonal, stress upon stress, no pyrrhics. I'm old. I atone. Eyes the color of celadon, she chants her hwyl. Her hardness once hidden, she flashes steel. Well, her solo has glory! Forged in this new self, what if she should come to me, my daughter, my weft? We weave our mutual fury. I'll not cock my ear or pretend I can hear her if I be deaf by then. -- Zara Raab DYBBUKS AND DEMONS As if the world had not shifted the table set as it should be: fork on the left, stirring spoon on the right. Pastry houses with chocolate roofs upright on a scalloped plate its painted flowers blooming in a permanent state. Anxiety leaks from my friend's eyes as she drifts in her tiny kitchen bouncing from sink to stove. Broken blinds sag like a face giving way to gravity and exhaustion. Her daughter beyond reach. The kettle shrieks its warning of ravens on a chipped stone wall. I know what it's like to live with a teenager a look of contempt thrown across a room her door slamming; Such condescension, as if mothers were born for this. Still I am the lucky one with a daughter who brings home stacks of books fusses only over hair and clothes. Her stubby fingers reach in a box for earrings not for a metal spoon, plastic bag, a flame releasing a rage of dybbuks and demons.
-- Carol V. Davis and then in cairo the guide takes us to "weavers college " leading us through warehouse gloom past rolled-up carpets to a back room where ll-year old girls at looms flick restless deft fingers pulling, twisting snapping rough yarn into place bleeding young hands of flesh in preparation upon graduation in two years for a life of beggary -- miriam chaikin BY THE SEA OF SODOM "Lot settled among the cities of the plain and pitched his tents toward
Sodom. " Gen: 13:12 Here, on a morning at the marina, heat glittering off the salty sea, my brief boy attends me, resting his curls on my lap like a limp butterfly not dry from its delicate cocoon. If I did not know I had no son I could rest in him as he rests in me. Do I take your name in vain or are you in this near-man child? Remember the nights I guarded your secrets in Haran, climbing the curved worm tunnels alone, burrowing up baked river earth to stand at last sprinkling rosewater over prayers chiseled on the sacred shelf of heaven. There I watched your wet breath blow the moon through slit windows in your ziggurat, turning the marks of dusty alphabets to liquid silver as the moonbeams struck. My grief has been this mute attendance at your mysteries, when all your magi are ash already in a brimstone fire. This morning, when I can hardly stop melting in my blue-and-white burnoose, show me favor, my difficult master, with the elixir of your blessings, one drop of which gives me my voice, so, climbing your stairs at dark, I might once more roar praises from the ramparts. -- Judith Werner
THE FORECAST OF WINDS This sadness has swept in before on a chilly breeze that carries me to an evening long ago when the sun turned sullen and the tall pines became dark and hooded- cruel I stood by the pool shivering and turned to you but I was alone and I knew then as clearly as if a mage had studied my stars and read to me of the painful designs printed on a page of black the forecast of winds that would bring strong love and the breezes in memory of their loss. -- Susan Oleferuk
ACROSS I've drunk white whispers from across a lake and once, between words, in a loved one's sighs. (The air and liquid clear the routes sounds take so ears can "feel " what's too remote for eyes.) And ink conveys like water, or the cliff, to render audible whole worlds unknown, between their author's breaths -- but only if we pay attention, that is, when alone, or being quiet by the shores of ponds. And through the crystal of an empty wine glass (crystal "ball ") the universe responds -- to silence-sippers . . . Red . . . White? . . . Red, then. (Note how it's reflected in the stein, flush with the mystery of all, unsaid.) -- James B. Nicola WAITING FOR ANNA *
Scotch broom fraught with yellow pleasure and luminous with dusk straggles down the hillside. In contrast with the purple clouds that loom to the east, its glow is ravenous, preternatural.
*
Across the valley, on a high ridge, a lone eucalyptus -- usually such a messy tree -- swaying, groaning, throwing off bark -- stands darkly etched, each leaf a perfect point, each white blossoming flower a study in stillness . . . the world on hold. * And then, from the quiet stealth of evening, voices emerge. Some cry out with a desperate will to live; others whisper with wasted breath. Within me, yearnings -- traces of that old surmise -- passion dense as fatigue, faithful as pain -- as joy foreboding. I know them well. Lift anchor! I will abroad! Renew myself on double pleasures! * But how much further do you want to go? Why not refuse the bossy insistence of new impressions? Behold instead your own fields and hills. Regale yourself with the lilac about to flower, the gold cups of the flannel bush, the crimson beauty of the wild rose. Stay awhile. Replenish in repose.
* Thus did reason speak to me . . . And thus do I sit, in my sigh-blown age, on a bench within a garden -- marvelous and reminiscent -- and wait for my dear friend Anna. -- Constance Rowell Mastores BEING THE SAME AS DUST What I miss you and me our words, and pieces of words, which may cross universes, the long distances between stars the purple black empty nothingness which knowing you gulfed but then to throw me into an impossible abyss me left open and the nights fearsomely dark and the hurt dark thoughts which exist now within my brain, and I cannot discuss the great not understoods standing between me and -- Peter Layton
EXPONENTIALLY THE WORDS DESERT In my singularity, I used to hear words. They rushed in on me. All I had to do was listen. Now in my forgettable years, I'm either deaf, or they, of their own stubborn will, have severed the connection. Perhaps they're increasing with Chaos, off on a merge with the Great Sprawl. They'll organize its lifestyle. Subject it to Bach. I liked it better when they sang to me and me alone. Now when I'm able to grab a few snatches, the lyrics seem pointless, absurd. The message a kind of Babled-down version. Sleepy-time talk for a Lear in his dotage. Of course it's none of my business what they do out there. Although I suspect they are moving one square to the next, to the next, building on their increasing order. Building toward the Poem of all Poems. Toward epic seizure. What Homer wrote. Or even Virgi1. Sing, goddess- Tell me, Muse -- Arma virumque cano. I shall go back to the beginning. Undo myself rhyme by rhyme. Then start again, with one word. Two words. And so on. -- Constance Rowell Mastores
A diamond is forever. --B.J. Kidd
The buoys of memory have faint bells, noticed in the night. I have left these chiming seamarks for the time of my return. They ring out there, but faintly, so faintly I can hardly hear. I think they want me to remember the severances of the soul, if soul is more than mere electric tissue. If Death is king and I do not reclaim what I have jettisoned, it goes to him. I do not want the king to have my life. Therefore, each night at sea, I must set out to find the ringing buoys and haul aboard the lagan realities, for now my aging body, my emotional mal de mer, lend renewed reality to the cold, damp camps. One numbered friend should wear a wedding ring, another was engaged, and yet a third, below and silent, had eyes like Tavernier blue diamonds set in Fabergé eggshell by the master. I cannot put a name to the smiling face I see, but she existed, who is now the faint dream of a denouement.
Shalom alekhem Shalom alekhem
So now I sail all night to find them and their symbols, to connect with them whatever seems appropriate, their rings, their eyes, their ways: but not alone to find the persons but to find the meanings of the persons to myself, the electric mind, before the king should claim them from my life.
— E.M. Schorb
This old sword still serves me For the steel is still sound; This old dog moves slowly But can still get around. This old heart is broken Yet manages to beat; The head-strong & stubborn Don't go down to defeat. This dark beard is graying But grows thicker each day; For grim costs of living Each return some small pay. Through mid-life's tough sledding Our bright youth must grow old; But with wisdom's increasing We're repaid some tenfold. -- Steven M. Sloan
HOW MANY MORE 1/28/2011 How many more birthday mornings Will I awake sans mortal pain How many more poems will I write Before I leave this human stain How many more thoughts will visit This increasingly scattered brain How many more years will I know Of sunshine, snow, of wind & rain How many more? Do not tell me -- Just let me breathe and hear and see -- George Held HARD Dad, it was hard to see you lying there -- And all the weight of nightmare on your chest Pressing you down. Your death was in the air. Wisdom offended when it dared suggest That all that weight and pain were for the best. No tears, I tell you, gathered at my eyes. My orphan status I'd not yet confessed. I cursed myself for being strong and wise. I wished you to grow stronger and to rise -- And knew my wishes were a childish joke. Philosophers I called on to advise My infancy were not ashamed to choke. I showed up and was present when you went -- But still can hardly face the gray event. -- Tom Riley LEVAYAH
for Dr. Pollack Heaven unlocks the gate of tears, a crashing wave of black umbrellas, topcoats, hats and veils. Dark waters cresting cleanse the street. The hearse rolls forward and we follow
down the block -- debris receding in its wake. -- Steven Sher
DUPLICATES
If it's days of spring you want, I've seen you gazing ahead in the field, Reddish buds opening on a green background Winking toward the plain that rears up. Which way are you headed? Which way will your feet carry you? Many paths are deceptive. They plunge into wadis, they disappear. In the distance appears a Bedouin leading his flock, an everyday occurrence, And a sweating camel gallops through the desert to gulp artesian water. Where are you? And you? Where are they? Where's everybody?? We're all duplicates. On far-off stars Our likenesses, our actions, past, present, and future, are duplicated. Our thoughts, our inventions, our actions on our own behalf -- Out there in the stars, far away and close up, they're all Thinking the thoughts that were once ours Doing the deeds that we once did Do the lines of a poem need immediate explanation? Give time time to play with the wind, with our creative spirit. Isn't it enough that our works are written down To be duplicated in our future mirroring Preserved on other planets Even after the Big Bang For future eternities, and after them? Shall not all of us, as envisioned, arise and renew and be renewed As though we had not been here before, as though time had stopped running . . .?
-- Adelina Klein From the Hebrew: E. Kam-Ron ECHOES When the soft, sweet sounds of love are whispered, their echoes fill all the hills and canyons, repeating every word over and over, and over again to touch all who are near or far away; so, we must be aware the sounds of love make form our memories, once spoken they last for eternity, and will be repeated through the long corridors of timeless time, be heard by every thing and every one, and echo forever. -- Robert William Russell
__________________________
III. There For a Reason FENCES I knew that the fence was close and that I could climb it, using all of my determination and cunning, but I didn't. It's there for a reason. I'd peek through, pressing my cheek against its fissures, thinking,
Doesn't that feel like me. I came to know the difference between the sound of a door opening, and the sound of a door closing. Dams form while waiting for the next interesting thing to happen. What is, is what's happening and what's apprehending. So the individual validation of significance is the part of the equation that keeps an inventory on where the body has been and where it is going. I know all these tragedies that will befall me, just not their order. Impermanence is practical, and infinity is romantic. Time is loss. Time is gain. Inherent nobility as a reflex is what I'm after, but my surroundings are roadblocks, as they should be. Nature tells me nothing of morality. I gesture from car windows. Staking and tying the boundaries of convictions, I claim this tiny portion of existence mine. Fences are just trees rearranged. The further you get from something, the more it becomes you. -- Daniel McDonell my space i do not speak of a cinema seat
temporarily vacated, and claimed again
but of a space i alone occupy, space the air defines as mine
space about which they say, "there she is, " when i am there
space i cannot stray from, step out of move aside in or share
i speak of space wholly mine, until as from shadow ousted by time — miriam chaikin
[Untitled] Take one more breath Before the soul arrives, One more breath of freedom, One more breath of light, Before the soul descends to the world of constrictions Take one more breath -- Tender, lucid, lovely -- That will fill you wholly, And try, my soul, not to forget everything in the constriction, Try to remember a little of the light, So that the light may shine for me in dark hours, Illuminating freedom, flight, existence, So that I may never forget, my dear soul, That I came from there, from the light, And that to that place I am destined To return -- Ma'ayan Or Batt
A FRAME A frame holds me, borders me, and within the frame I splash purple, crimson and peacock blue. The colors whirl and create circles and heptagons. Within the colors I place quavers and semibreves. The notes play their song and their melody is heard beyond the borders. Within the melody I pen letters. The letters join together and form words. The words -- a fence around the truth. Truth sprouts white wings, gains strength and flies to a canopy standing on four poles and under the canopy, Truth's bride -- Peace. -- Ruth Fogelman POOLING SAND It's disruptive hearing the front door open and shut I who am mostly seeking solitude and silence. The whole open outdoors exposed now to my house veins of light from lampposts, an occasional passing car, the noises of the street. Why is it that the thought locked front door jamb opens swinging from the caught wind the nasal smell of tumbleweeds the tumbling ghosts whose whereabouts, what-abouts, like you, remain unknown? -- Peter Layton
HORIZONS 1. Bare oak filigrees engrave the pewter sky. Each twig obeys genetic dictates while growing this way or that at the whim of the wind. Random yet preordained, a tree is a fractal struggle between entropy and destiny that somehow yields a perfect peace like the patient lattice of atoms in a single snowflake. 2. Poplar skeletons along a ridge are poised to paint in unison a blood-hued sunset. A dogged blaze of hubris is a self-deluding prelude to benighted havoc: an unintended apocalypse of folly. 3. Our view from the train renews itself like each passing day, yet we can't see past the vain prophecies called the foreseeable future. While accident engulfs intent, we plan and make lists, unaware of the black swan beyond the horizon. -- David Olsen A PERFECTLY SPHERICAL BEAD At the beginning each is issued a separate spherical bead, perfect, that contains them, one by one, Translucent boundary, order of self, And everyone is able to press a face against the bead's hard surface, from inside, or outside, catch glimpses, shadows shifting -- but always clarity is marred. If one were to chip away at the bead as at coal veins, only tiny shivers would come away, even with the hardest of tools, leaving the perfectly spherical surface blemished -- imperfect, and marring what clarity there once might have been. Each life being a separate, perfectly spherical bead and the path upon its surface never marked, each path to be determined by each step upon it, commencing at the very first, and never a real trace that can be used for following the lost to where they've gotten to. Each perfectly spherical bead -- bumping up against other perfectly spherical beads, making it possible for the joining of hands and the linking of paths even as each proceeds within one's own separately rounded shelter; -- making it also possible for pushing and shoving off paths and sometimes into the final step -- before its time. Each life being a perfectly spherical bead, with only the end marked, the choice being to blaze the path and always flee the final step, or simply to circle it over and over again, until it becomes familiar. Or to stride directly for it and hesitate perhaps, at the last, just before the final stride that will cause the bead to collapse upon itself to its shadowed center. Each life being a perfectly spherical bead whose curve conceals the ending, so that even when the ending is pursued, it is always beyond the horizon, not taunting you in an open field to come forward and take it. -- and the irony that no matter what direction, what labyrinthine path, the final step, though concealed, is never more than a step away and, if looked for, in the proper light, always visible. -- Harry Youtt JACK-IN-THE-BOX When the lid is open I experience a world of beauty and song. alive and full of energy.
But when the lid is closed I am pushed down deep into empty darkness; I experience only fear and despair. Directed inward I can see no further than my little box and forget how it feels to be free.
But I know, deep within my heart, that a time will come when the lid will be opened again.
Then the sun will shine on my face Light through my being I will laugh, sing and be filled with love. . . Oh how ecstatic I shall be! -- Avril Meallam
OCEAN WITHOUT END I am a spirit Like all other human spirits A point of light An aura. I am a universe Endlessly expanding . . . Contracting to . . . Nothingness. I cannot sail all Of my cosmic seas Nor behold all The jewelled galaxies Or widening black holes Of my ocean without end; My craft is too frail My candle too dim And my wick, Though constantly relighted, Too soon snuffed out. Yet I would proclaim myself. -- Roy L. Runds FENCED IN/OUT My virtual white picket fence keeps out the respectful and the law-abiding but not the trespassers, terrorists and proselytizers, and it's pervious to viruses, paranoia, and the perverse, and fear seeps through it, fear of life lived beyond its pale, fear of the teeming street with its filth and otherness, its wildness and allure. o how I need and detest my virtual white picket fence! -- George Held
THE COUNTRY OF THE SOUL ". . . at the skin my being doesn't end. " -- George Faludy A porous organic fence built not only for defense but as an explorer of the unknown and an envoy to the familiar; antenna and transmission tower: the skin. That's the border of the country of being, but being doesn't have to stop there if the border guards let the soul slip in and out on the waves of the universal wing; where are you now? Still hiding in your skin? The outside stops where you hang your skin curtain, but it doesn't have to be of iron, does it? Teased by the fingertip lights of life it becomes tight and you're ready to jump out of it; but if life throws teardrops at your skin, are you willing to step out and ask why? Better yet, just ask how? Reach out and ask how you can help to stop the flow of tears; but even better yet, show there's life beyond the skin; beyond the pain and pleasure, that's where life begins. -- Paul Sohar
From SONNETS TO ORPHEUS, SECOND SERIES 29 Hushed friend of many distances, feel how your breath is even now extending space. From belfries' darkened carpentry let you be heard to strike. Whatever being draws its nourishment from you grows strong from this. What, of what you've lived through, gave most pain? Explore all sides of metamorphosis. Is your drink bitter? Change yourself to wine. In this night's immensity, become the magic where your senses undergo their nexus, unexplained: be what it means. And if the spirit of the world disdains your memory, tell the still earth: I flow. To the rushing water say: I am. -- Rainer Maria Rilke from the German: T.P. Perrin
NIGHT-BRIGHTNESS The night is peerless and serene, Its brilliance luminous. Each house stands marvelous within A silver universe. A magic brightness reigns in me So rich and prodigal It fills my being clear and free From sorrowing or trial. In my heart's house I cannot cage All this rich light alone: It will, it must, escape, must break The final barriers down. -- J.G. Seidl from the German: T.P. Perrin [Note: this poem was set to music by Franz Schubert.] BEYOND MY VIEW. . . . . . the endless waves roll on, and beyond view is a sanctuary where dreams come true; somewhere in my mind, shrouded in darkness, is that refuge, holding my happiness; somewhere in my heart, there without a trace, memories hide, only to reappear whenever all my sadness I embrace, and be aware somewhere there is the place where the long lost past will come into view, beyond the horizon . . . there I will find memories not longer hide, and my mind, freed from darkness, will see a rendezvous far beyond the waves, where One has divined a sanctuary were dreams will come true. -- Robert William Russell STRANGE HORIZONS 1 In his life he'd traveled far, obsessed with strange horizons. Nights full of restless noises lured him to lighted, crowded places. But the days, melted into calm, mundane moments, dulled the blood. To quell the sluggish pulse of it, wanting adrenaline, he'd move on. 2 Later, old, only a dull coolness in the veins, he looked to the gloaming. The horizon's last orangy glare left him with pitch-black moments-- then the wind, yet restless in memory, blew up to scatter its debris. -- J.E. Bennett THE SAME SUN for Yifat Alkobi the same sun dries the clothing on the line sleeveless blouses floor length skirts shorts scarves ripped t-shirts orange, black, red, blue
the same breeze dries the clean tiled floors rustles heavy drapes flickers curtains ripples blinds
a loose tile in the corner a house of heavy beige stone seems made to last stucco seems to crack crumble only seems
the same sun blinds warms cannot be faced we avert our eyes to floors where different souls tread -- Mindy Aber Barad STORIA A gravel path winds through wild shrubs, dense thickets of trees. There are no footsteps, just the clamorous buzz of cicadas, wave upon wave. Rocks jut out among openings of tall grasses, holding eons among the leaves temporary appearance. The path leads to an empty garrison devoid of thudding boots, the rifle's crack. Demarcations are cancelled by oblivion, Slovenia blurs into Italy, borders shift beneath my skin. Butterflies weave the air with their colors, hold the beauty of the moment in their wings. -- Marguerite Guzman Bouvard
"GUN-FIRE OR FIRE-WORKS? " May 2001 Jerusalem Yom HaAtzma'outh (Israeli Independence Day) Gun-fire or fire-works? Damn those terrorists Damn those jerks More gun-fire; G-d I'm tired. Fifty-third "Atzma'outh" Anniversary Oh my G-d: Absurdity. Went to Shul, went t'Efrata Debated myself, if I ought ta Almost didn't go, almost didn't show Shall I walk by our "Berlin wall;" But they say, I'm not so tall, so Maybe the bullets'll sail . . . Over my head, and I shan't be All that dead? Stay at home or celebrate outside? Darn it, I must decide! Went to Shul, davenned Hallel; Din't ask th' enemy t' go t' Hell. "Gaba'eet " insisted I stay 'n dine 'Twas of no use . . . I tried t' decline, As she convinced me all too well. Food was great, my mood improved 'N Local Joe guitar'd us with Old-fashioned tunes. Guest speaker was smart enough Not to preach; rather, T' entertain us with a Relevant speech. Neither moralizing nor polarizing Nor imploring nor ignoring Past wars and scars From our present-day wars. But...that un-welcome sound On familiar ground, it's been Seven months of machine-gun rounds. We heard it again, we quietly shrieked, Some got up, out of our synagogue seats. We mildly yelled at each other: Fire-works, or, machine-gun fire? Some ran out doors to take a look; Most sat in our seats and clenched our teeth. Eventually I too walked home Electing main-street Gilo On the fire-works side Leaving aside the "Berlin wall " A big-black-hole of Nothingness Walking home, breathing G-dliness Getting home with Holiness. Getting home from a great big mess. Getting home. Emptiness. Getting home. Empty-nest. Getting home. That's the best. Getting home. Away from blasts. Getting home safe. While it lasts. -- Sue Tourkin-Komet
IN NO MAN'S LAND what happens to those afraid to move frozen forever like a shadow behind an indifferent oak a dream can still freeze me in the drama of my run across the border a tableau pregnant with bullets and finales what happens to the footsteps frozen to the spot not knowing which way to run what happens to the corpses of those shot at the border trying to escape the script what happens to the prayers that turn into stones and attack their own tired feet what happens to the oaks that failed to report the escapee hiding behind them and how do the oaks feel now the ones that refused to tell the hunted which way to flee oaks are indifferent border guards they guard neither the border nor the shadow hiding behind them don't look back at the border you've crossed alive it might come after you -- Paul Sohar
BOUNDARY
Here, beside the sources of the Jordan River that's been like a brother to me, the brother who carried me, striding in the only direction, on his shoulders, I awoke from a wild drive in a blazing-hot, desolate place, not knowing where, in my life and in all your lives is the boundary line between the fertile pastures of generosity and the field mined with weaknesses.
-- Hamutal Bar-Yosef from the Hebrew: E. Kam-Ron (e)the(real) 87. hark the hark & herald the herald wince as a mighty voice preens, slapped back into a fable full of puns & symmetry. how daring these puffs of air tampering with the songs of zions living on the edge of quicksand & a red, red, sea. -- Guy R. Beining ASYLUM SEEKERS' FEARS Gathering storms of uncertainty frighten them as they assemble at the border of prolonged wait for unjust decisions At the frozen glacier of complex asylum system, they breathe fire Their immigration status causes constant panic and fear Minute by minute they are petrified by their predicament Night is naught as it brings no hope of heroism Instead nightmares terrify these sleepless asylum seekers
Possible detention propel nervousness as they become scared of being locked like foreign criminals They pray unceasingly for the removal flights to be cancelled because they are deeply horrified to return to their homelands They are frightened by prospects of poisonous prisons Where vast hell cannot endure human rights abuses Honestly, sanctuary seeking is journey littered with endless trepidation
-- Handsen Chikowore THE ETHIOPIANS War being war only trouble harrowed our days. Even the oases dried up. Wild horses roamed the shrinking marshes kicking up dust. Migrant birds didn't stop to visit between continents but scud missiles did. To keep the heart alive rumours flew: the improved model of the world will end this latest celebration of egomania -- ( as Jeremiah foretold ) while the Ethiopians' chocolate doe-like eyes beseeched the sky for explanations. To reach their ancestral home they travelled on foot across deserts and drought as deliberate as the gap between atomic and rotational time around the sun, when leap seconds rush in, global winds and the moving molten matter in the planet's interior relate to distant points in the solar system -- wonders understood by scientists and, of course, the Ethiopians, who knew that nothing in nature recognizes borders, territorial claims or invasions. -- Gretti Izak
OFFENDING BORDERS It's so hard to break the American shell I find myself in, ignorant of cultures not my own. All I know is imported, what they sell like Ferrari dreams, sushi, and tequila. They'll try to immigrate, those foreigners, then bemoan: "It's so hard to break the American shell. " George W. wanted a patrolled wall to compel Mexicanos to stay at home (because they are brown?). All I know is their rhetoric, what politicians sell (being a jingoist is why Bush is going to hell). Voting for big oil, the cost is well known. It's so hard to break the American Shell Oil Company's hold- all the CO2 we expel while driving a truck on vacation to Yellowstone. All I know is capitalism, what TV ads sell. How does it affect the world? Some foretell disaster, some say we're a citadel, some disown. It's so difficult to break the American shell; all I know is what I buy, what they sell.
-- Ryan Peeters EXTRAS Thrilled by Titicaca's wicked syllables, I'd begged to be Peru; I am El Salvadoor, Mrs. Richardson told me I was. I sit in a semicircle on a school stage between Ekwadoor and Gwatamala. Alphabetical order trumps geography, but we are all Paramount or MGM Mexicans, extras, scratchy serapes draped over siesta slumped shoulders our sweeping sombreros with Tijuana or Ensenada stitched to the crowns. Put them on backwards so no one sees. In late hours of the century, No one saw... light slanting off the barrels of our M-16's or heard the shrieks as villages vanished. No one smelled rotting cattle, burnt corn, or felt the smooth wood of unstained coffins surrendered to soil that grew only crosses. No one heard low voices settle on prices none could afford; no one saw faint desert traces, or, in Yuma, baffled faces scanning boxcars or a Greyhound passport they could not decipher. These extras never wore sombreros on multi-purpose room stages. Now, in a century's young light, we see. Mrs. Richardson was right; Yo soy EI Salvador. -- John O'Dell ONCE UPON A TIME I bear with it to honor creation, still curious as to what is around the bend. I bear with it to sanctify courage, to give it a stage to grapple with itself I bear with it for the amazing wonder, the mind leaping probing deeply into the aethers I bear with it most days trying hard as a man can, yet inside saving some for my soul I bear with it to witness the arithmetic the literary history of my people through our myths I bear with it in comprehension of the unseen, certain of the isolation of relations dreamed I bear with it with deep empathy as the parade, the cortege, of the mortal coil passes by I bear with it to build an arc of words a bridge that passes from here to there once upon a time -- Michael S. Morris A FAMILY RECIPE, AKRON Latkes, fried potato pancakes with frayed edges from the onions Emma stirred in -- derived from latka, Yiddish for patches made to clothes worn through, reworked, and worn again. Latkes for her family, whole at Thanksgiving since the children who had married out refused to come for Hanukkah. Meanwhile siblings renewed their childhood scraps, each one abused in turn, as in-laws glared and children squirmed. Just eight, I noted what a ragged thing family gathered to give thanks could become, how bitter herbs were always blossoming, though not from Seders we also wouldn't share. Then latkes patched all squabbles till next year. -- Will Wells JOURNEYINGS
We were exiled from land to land, from one continent to another, And when we gathered in a place that was wretched compared to its past It was already inhabited and hostile. Although the wind blew on it from far off, We set up housekeeping there.
Now we are exiles in the guise of tourists: Two weeks in Patagonia, a few hours in the Louvre, Stuck in travel agencies, Spending the night in airports, Equipped with backpacks and suitcases packed to bursting Like a promise that there is somewhere to go back to.
And where Where are we going to, ascending and descending -- Near-experts at reading foreign signs -- And again, where is the gate to our desired destination?
In the meantime, Like chameleons we suit ourselves to the background So as not to be caught in some definition that would commit us And cancel the exclusive group individuality we almost acquired On our most recent journeyings. -- Ruth Blumert from the Hebrew: E. Kam-Ron THE KINGDOM OF UNCERTAINTY Lies one accidental quantum-event horizon Slightly north of the last book you've been reading. You may have heard it referred to cryptically By students of an arcane mathematical discipline In the hallways of certain secular institutions. Few people arrive there intentionally. You can't just jump in your car and get there overnight; There are no national or international flights; No street signs, Atlas Road Maps or GPS indicator Will get you to any fixed geographical coordinates. The metes and bounds are not recorded In your local courthouse. There are no gas stations, Libraries with sacred texts, or places of worship To hang your hat. There are no rail lines Running on Time through the boroughs or spanning The continent, bringing bankers, speculators And 21st century carpetbaggers looking to exploit Natural resources and take up residence In luxury hotels. And finally there is no veranda Where you can sit in your bathing suit Admiring the setting sun lighting up ice cubes In before dinner drinks, while you stare Mindlessly at the horizon which always appeared To circumscribe your whole idea of the beginning And end of everything. What may happen to you is this: You'll wake-up One night in a cold sweat -- that open book on the nightstand Beside your bed, the windows and shutters will be rattling, The foundation of your heretofore ordinary safe house Will be rumbling -- and you will say to yourself, "Where am I?" And, "How in the name of all that's holy Did I get here?" Relax. But be forewarned, You've just cleared customs, crossed A heavily guarded border into unchartered territory, Becoming the expatriate of a country Where you can never, ever return. -- Tom Chatburn BOUNDARIES are set in the mind, afraid to cross, because of what you might find. Standing at the water's edge, you hedge. The spirit is weak, the wind begins to shriek. You will not cross today. Perhaps tomorrow you will find a way. -- John F. Gruber SHADOWS Obscure signs that have been posted. Their message hangs in the mist. "No trespassing. " But you have inadvertently stepped over the boundary. No sirens blare, or searchlights glare. You continue on, knowing the night and you Have much to share. -- John F. Gruber
ULTIMA THULE Before we discovered that continents slide about, tethered to nothing, and the universe is an infinite sphere with its center everywhere, ancient mariners worried about plunging over the edge of the world, and marked a point on their maps as Ultima Thule, the exact spot where you ran out of wind and fell into a vast deep stillness. Astonishing now to think once the world was a tidy well-lighted room sealed up tight with an inside and nothingness night outside. And us, what of us? carried out here in a dimensionless dark with a defective compass on a ship that reshapes itself with the fluidity of its motion, plotting our course by exploding stars and the unsettled, momentary tracks of seabirds. Will there once again be a room with walls we know by touch in the dark, a floor nailed down flat, or the memory of a steady light, fixed on rock in a harbour that is still there when we open our eyes? -- Stanley J. O'Connor
THE HARBOR
"… O Lord, hear my prayer, listen to my supplications in Your faithfulness, answer me in Your righteousness. " (Psalm 143:1)
There has to be a well-protected bay, A harbor or a port which offers me Some respite from a restless, endless sea; There has to be a simpler, shorter way To find a jetty than long routes that play A game of hide-and-seek; there has to be A docking-area for boats, a quay Where ships can moor before they drift astray. How long, my God, how long before I reach The haven of Your shore? Suspicions haunt The bowels of my craft; I want to bring My vessel to Your islands' safest beach, O Lord, I want to touch dry land, I want To disembark, my Anchor and my King. -- Yakov Azriel THE SLIPPERY TERRAIN OF PROTECTION 1 For my friend, the painter, it is now time to admire the fuchsia tree so earthbound and content, so totally untainted by our own experience, draping big satin leaf clusters and pink flowers over the great liquidity of the sea. 2 He prepares the canvas by creating a barrier of gesso between linen and pigment. The tangibility of things sways his mind with storms of logic: Should he feel guilty building barriers, boundaries, devices for the fuchsia tree which borrows so discreetly hues from the amenable sea?
3 Veil over veil of glazes, another shield, blocking façade, oils and thinners gnaw at cloth, sheath deep into weave and fibre; streaming skeins of paint form themselves into changing shapes -- slippery nuances of colour swept across the body of canvas nameless energy he understands as total perfection that if not contained will consume him like an arrow of fire. -- Gretti Izak
POET OR PRETENDER
for Gwilym Left or right. On or off. Nought or one. Tyranny of either/or.
In your binary humility you call yourself a pretender, but you slalom the convoluted surface
of the space-time continuum, neither inside nor outside, ever curling back upon yourself
in constant quest of memory and future, unaware that both lack certainty and shape.
Toiling in thickets of meaning, poets are always in process, always becoming, like galaxies or gardens. -- David Olsen
TOWARD THAT WHICH DOES NOT STRICTLY COHERE A noisy universe of disquiet voices. No drama in that life except the literary kind. A poet whose most inspired lines occur in fragmentary poems that would yield unprecedented beauty if there were only a way to make them all fit together. His work stands, in its misfit glory, as various sized building blocks -- some rough, others exquisitely fashioned -- of an impossible but marvelous monument. Pessoa the master nonbuilder! Or one could compare his oeuvre to a set of ruins. Like the temple complex of one or another acropolis, where only ghosts of gods take their solitary way through what remains, and Apollo's lyre barely twangs in the breeze. Thinking of Pessoa's works in this way, as ruins, what one hears is not the sound of plucked strings but a seemingly incongruous, wistful progression of chords. From one of Chopin's Preludes, Opus 28. Twenty-four brief compositions that sound more like remnants than beginnings; tonal improvisations that in their delicate hovering seem to exist in some mysterious, other-than-real realm -- as on a heavenly Olympus above the earthly one -- works realized to the point of divine perfection -- after which they fall to the ground and break into pieces, most of which are lost irretrievably. From the few exceedingly beautiful that remain -- whispers that send us back to the source -- we can discern something of that original splendor, for which we feel, as humans, a natural longing, an old affinity. -- Constance Rowell Mastores DREAM VOICE Again she opens her mouth Takes a deep, hopeful breath Feels the air vibrate Across her throat Across a range of notes Ready to grasp a mike Then illusions drop away Leaving one long, real sound A sad sigh No change Just an ordinary voice Where is the line she wonders Where is the line between A good and great voice. Where is the line between Personal Will and Divine help She will try again tomorrow And tomorrow Waiting for the shift For her dream voice to emerge -- Heather Gelb gatekeepers i turn restless longing for sleep waiting for the little folk to appear behind my eyes tiny beings eyelash high arriving singly erect with intention moving in silence in slow motion forming a fence around me closing ranks drawing closer to one another closer still ever closer lifting me from my landscape setting me down in theirs -- miriam chaikin BOUNDARIES Beached on the gritty sand of sleep awareness only bubbles on the rim, I hear voices call me in the soft Yiddish accents of my childhood that changed the vowels of my name to sighs. I am again the child who chants herself to sleep each night with the ancient rhythm of Shema Yisrael . . . and by day skims over glazed sidewalks on crimson runners, the sled attached firmly by a rope to my mother's hands, her boots tamping fresh snow before me with the sound of certainty. In a world as patterned as the six-pointed snowflakes melting just now on my tongue, I throw my arms wide to greet the day rushing toward me on a stream of powdered air. -- Sheila Golburgh Johnson When all the stars but one shine bright at last, and cast their wan beams o' er the sleeping, lest pure darkness shroud their pallid forms, the list of souls forgotten grow, and leave the lost to pine eternally in fruitless lust, then wake the demons, rouse the walking lust that baring long-old teeth that them outlast; they wander blind, and even ever lost they never can return to face light, lest their figure drop a rung on quondam list, their unsaid purpose only to enlist those night-tossed human shapes for whom they lust, and ring the mortals from their slumber, lest their slender, empty husks the night don't last, and wake up dead, the morn as life but lost. And, never meeting, never getting lost, the cohorts trundle down their ancient list, white shadows in the night, until the last gem winking starry eye sand-blinks the lust from waking night, and gilds the sidewalks, lest the purple velvet settles. Shuffling, lest the burning, rubbing eye catch sight of lost and homeless spirits, aching in their lust for respite, for the ragged, exed-out list, the shadow-figures hide themselves at last. Ere the least of the midnight army's loosed liest asleep the lowest of the laced. -- Daniel Galef SANDPIPERS
Quick scurry-legs; so happy. Chasing foam to nibble newborn bubbles in the sand, investigating (is it edible?) They live between the waves. And if their home requires frequent exits and dry land by way of refuge (up, if possible) we're not so different; we do plenty of our own expectant perching. Watch them chase a crunchy sand-flea; you'll identify. For just a second, zig-zagging above the inundation, they're oblivious, and you're convinced they'll capsize. But one eye is always ready for the wall of foam, and so are we. Two species, beach-mad. Home. --Kathryn Jacobs ONE MORE MILLENIUM All of a sudden you look back how time has travelled . . . almost nothing is left. No more room, everything in little boxes, memory chips in jars with machines that record them. History, a playback
generations, like a talisman you wear on your neck, reminding yourself, pearls of wisdom that you carry around. Sitting on a park bench far away in time, repeating what each one tells what itched . . . you scratched, as sweat the size of worry beads, one more link in the chain.
That was a funny joke, you laughed, when it was fresh. Eyes follow the images the You Tube inside your head the doctor ordered. It keeps you happy when you are down and out . . . one more prayer, one more reason to forgive. You smile
to survive here is to know the stuff you hold means something. There is a reason for you to be, to keep what was there here and now forever. -- Zev Davis THE FERRIS WHEEL ON NAVY PIER My childhood favorite when the carnival came to town with all the sound of gritty oil smoothing the turn of metal gears, the smell of carny sweat and cotton candy, the fake glitter that dazzled our excited eyes was this lift and swing through air and view of our flat landscape smoothed out clear to where the sky was pinned to earth, our 360o view. We thrilled to our daring, tipping dangerously at the top, frail metal scaffolding our only safety, and below, cabbagey heads were clumped, none marveling at us, all seeking their own dangers. When we decided to see Chicago from that giant wheel looking to lake and city both, it moved so slowly in its huge circle that we did not gasp once or even fear for our lives. He was too young to make such comparisons, but I decided, once and for all, that the creaky old imperfect things, the worn-to-nothing bathrobes, the small chattels of childhood, can never be surpassed by the awe-inspiring displays of our biggers and betters. Never. -- Carol Hamilton BERNICE ABBOTT WPA wasn't ideal but it was the happiest day when I got a grant. I did New York, the old tenement building. I'd take my photos around, went to the Bowery. A man said nice girls don't go to the Bowery. I said, I'm not a nice girl, I'm a photographer, I'm going anywhere -- Lyn Lifshin
BARRIERS I was about to say something but stopped against the window pane his face -- his eyes stone grey met mine -- no recognition in angry pain perhaps staring at his reflection I at mine or was it his overexcited behind the double glazing I shouted non-messages into echoing silence . . .
I wish, I wish that there had been an open window to let in the moon to catch the moment to hear the string quartet tuning up to clear the fog to see and touch . . . But what if his eyes were dead and his hands on the strings were stone? -- Ruth Stern
STONEWALLED To the beat of your lifelong drum the height of your wall extends, stone on hard cold stone. By the time I get home from work, you've slit sweetness from daybreak's kiss, blocked your hold around my waist, skin to skin, dogs nuzzling for warmth. This stonewalling sours the moment our tongues taste succulent morels you've prepared for us with brandy and cream, locks you in darkness when evening light invites us to wander under redbud's last bloom. I see life recede through holes in your wall. I whisper I love you. Crack filler splashes (and stings) my eye from the safety of your side of the wall. -- Molly O'Dell ENTICEMENT Your mood is granite and your opinions do not give. You are the stone faces on Mt. Rushmore. Nothing flexes. Something might. But the backside of the moon is the reflection Of superstitious cheese. Settle for green? Why not? You are as far away from enticement as temptation On the sly. I am trying to get into your reluctance, To be with you when you pull off your blanket.
-- David Lawrence NO BOUNDARIES FOR THEM! In that family there were no boundaries Particularly with language Everybody just leapt right in And said whatever they wanted And asked whatever they wanted. It paid to be on guard, watch What one said in case it came back twisted, bent into a sharp Tool that pricked the flesh and Made it smart and opened old wounds with a new betrayal. In that family there were no boundaries Everyone chimed in and joined every private conversation Turned every phone call into a conference call And each piece of mail into an item of communal property. A new friend underwent due diligence from three generations And might not be approved. Yet over time even the rejected ones became family friends, absorbed in the
crowd. Each courtship was in the public domain, with running commentary about each
intimacy observed, and much debate about the prognosis, and all of this was
shared with friend, on phone, email, Skype and Facebook. Each illness gave permission to share and circulate the most private workings of the failing flesh . . . After all, everyone just wanted to help. The small children winced, old enough to understand that their secrets were being traded, Like shares in a mutual fund. And old age and end of life issues? Well the welfare of the matriarch became a constant topic of conversation Within the family and beyond. She had become a mascot The survivor of the survivors Yet for herself she kept some boundaries Cultivating a veil of mystery which She cherished till the very end. -- Ruth S. Sager
[untitled] I didn't know that leaving was this hard It came like a wave of forgotten soldiers lying in ambush. It fell like a claw from a caged tiger. It crawled on my senses stealing scratches by mercy. I couldn't believe the way my stomach screamed. It felt bloated beyond scarred fury. It was a door closing from beyond. -- T. Anders Carson
YOU ARE THE OTHER
You are the other, longing to receive him Into the maze of mirrors That waits at the door of wonder and suspicion And inhibition in the presence of difference A wish to go out into the expanses of the other -- Who is not in doubt Because no one understands his way; his court; his occupation; His thoughts; his difference So who will take him to their heart? Their circle? To the hourglass that waits For some consequential, general Change in status to take place Which will lead the individual and the community From impatience To unconditional acceptance And the other will be like you, his bread and sustenance And yours one and the same Understanding his different world For all is breath and vanity And all have been mistaken in their grasp of And their reservation from the other, the different Who is actually no different and no other In the nape of accepting understanding -- Adelina Klein From the Hebrew: E. Kam-Ron YES, BUT
The other is only I And I am only the Other Within the One
Down here there is difference Yes and no Public and private Right and wrong Sacred and profane Friend and foe Mine and thine
Down here is a pattern Whose complex, articulate, Differentiated, infinitely Nuanced unity Reflects the One
Go and study -- E. Kam-Ron
YOU AND I As you and I sat face to face A wedge of ice came down. I watched it come. It was colorless and quite transparent: Through it I saw you speak. Widening it pried our chairs apart, Pushed away my freezing cheek, Tore from the planks a splitting screech, Then it was gone. The air in the room was enormous, And we faced each other From opposite walls, flat portraits Pressed behind panes of glass. -- E. Kam-Ron, 1962 4037 CONNECTING THE SEVEN SEAS* In this our world of confrontations we do live, slinging slogans of partisan "interests." We build ourselves up to hardly understand others, Hearing how to rebut and up-the-ante of our own. Yet false images and short processes can change even if, ironically, only the privileged ones can see. Ultimately they will realize that their own good lies beyond a sweet life towards a constructive one. Our thoughts are straw thrown to the roaring wind carrying wandering sparks that are hard to lit up. Indeed, how to express them well in writing if not slipping underground from us altogether? Sometimes the cloud veils open up and a light descends through the rain. It'll create a prism able to reflect your own soul by giving you the feeling of sheer existence. Such clarity readies you to hear the whale song As it is transmitted across the seven seas. You'll know then of persons unknown, far away, striving to endow authenticity from your heart.
-- Hayim Abramson *This is a reaction to Esther Cameron's analysis of her poem "You and I " ; in a newsletter to her friends [Rosh Chodesh Av Menachem 5772]. Key words: confrontations, slogans, images, processes, wind and whale song.
NOTTURNO In dreams, when beauty meets the stranger, when the created being sloughs its snake's skin and is no longer wrinkled, no longer luster- less, no longer a drab, work-a-day thing, but rekindled, broken out afresh, released from withered patterns; and yet, for all that, true to itself and ancient as light -- translucent, unscarred, smooth as pared back bark -- newly-born, eager to greet the stranger emerging from the limits of a dark wood -- the otherness no longer other -- only these, these two, each reflecting the other's face, while outside the destroying minutes flow, while outside footsteps fall into an ordinary day; but here, here where the two are met, smooth rind, rondure, and leaf, the heart born into the whole, open and received. -- Constance Rowell Mastores
FINDING THE PLEIADES "Do you see it?" "I think so -- no I don't -- yes -- almost --." "You're trying too hard." "There it is now. I have it." "Well what do you think?" "It doesn't look like much, does it? -- Now I've lost it again. " "Try not looking at it. Just look away. Find yourself Orion. Then presume the Pleiades in the quiet of your mind." "You're not making sense." "We're not here to make sense. We're here to find stars. -- Just gaze deep into the black sky with its wide array of dotted presences. Now, what do you see?" "Ah yes. There it is again! Magnificent!" Ending the evening by not peering directly at what it is we're trying to see -- with some kind of understanding in our sights and almost at our fingertips, with wisdom in places we never expected -- Sometimes we find answers before thoughts can form behind them. Sometimes the sense of a thing drips directly out of the chaos that surrounds it. -- Harry Youtt
____________________________ IV. Self-Reflection
SWAY INCARNATE
Yetza hora, you late work-a-day Sway incarnate, be child's play. Putrid evil, poised as prey, Tender not our souls' dismay.
Abominable breath personified, Authentically, eternally alive, Grafting chaos, always contrives Loss, sorrow, or death's arrival.
Accumulated, toxic waste, Before, during, plus past your place. Dream destroyer, reason effacer, Dark memory, deep distaste.
Panic-keeper, master of slaughter, Fear shepherd, gaoler of order, Plodder, plotter, major marauder, Fisher of spirits, tester of borders.
Brutish sovereign, terrorist prince, Explosive, flammable evidencer, Changeling, world beater, media convincer, Void, null, creation incenser.
Speck of thunder, bolt of fire, realize Truth descends from regions higher! Not all light shall join your pyre Prayer, change, charity inspires.
Voices lift, persons bless, Wonders gild, great and less, When in service, holiness Maintains the small, keeps the rest.
In truth, you're everyone's servant, twained, To rule no one where sanctity stands. Again you're conquered, again you're restrained, Only righteous honor can dwell near The Name. -- KJ Hannah Greenberg
[Yetsa hora -- the Evil Inclination.]
"GREED IS GOOD". . . "Greed is good," quoth Golden Gordon Gecko, The filmic leader of the broker clan, And up and down Wall and Main Street echoed The exalted Words of the great man. So far, so good, if you follow up his plan, But beware you do not become too bold, Take not what you deserve but what you can By any means including sale of soul. The ancients punished such with drafts of molten gold. -- Leonard Roller
THE LOOKING GLASS WAR O evil twin, not brother, not myself, What wealth you've squandered on murderous intents. I dissent. I gaze into the glass as dumb, Mumming terror distorts your bleary face & trace the crinkled lines that care has limned, & sin, & time, as we fret against their theft Bereft our Atlas burdens to stare together Whither once our blithened youth we shared, Bared in glory, like Solomon his scales, But tales of love, once-friend, die doomed to rage: Engaged in war, we lose the ones we claim, Framed within the flare before we go, O evil twin my life has laid so low. -- Michael Baldwin CAIN HUNTS "If you do not turn to doing good, there is sin crouching at the entrance,
and for you is its craving. " Gen 4:7 I go to the river with an arrow to seek the innocence of a deer in the stillness when the sun sinks below the border of the world. A stag comes on silver hoofs, sniffing an alien breeze. "Lay down your life, " I sing, a reed to the wind, and string the loom of my bow patterned with lions and gazelles. The buck's nostrils widen and lift. My arrow's shuttle flies and stops all weaving. Now the warp ends. On my shoulders, blood stains me like the finest madder and kermes. Antlers beat the end of time loosely on the small of my back. I light the pyre and smoke curls over the field that death has conquered. Out of the flames, the forked snake rises, burning my world away.
-- Judith Werner
TELL ME Hide it in my desk where I will find it. Show me the policy. Guide my digit down the arcane index, indicate. Give me the conditions. Spell it out. Preach it to me. Teach me a ditty of it. Dictate a summary memo of it. Let further treatment expand to nothing but ditto, ditto, as was said, pronounced, as something impossible to contradict. Give me verdict, sentence. Give it not in leaving benediction, but in judgment, the parting shot before you abdicate. Dedicated, addicted to it, late I wait. I can take it. Dish it out. -- John Milbury-Steen WILL When I fall Short Before my goal, And all control Is out-of-hand, My soul Finds peace upon the sand -- Yet when I hear, Beyond a hill, The sigh Of, still, What might remain, My will Encounters every grain. -- David Kiphen SELF REFLECTION Smite smote smitten words find redemption even provide a mood for the doubtful and surreal the dreamers and the gloom but no syntactic legerdemain can explain how we hate those we hurt love those we help trust those we betray Maybe reason can be read in the pitter patter of our DNA though I suspect our lineage was not a logical leap, linear and upright maybe a swirl like a shell a limpet, a damp barnacle with suction cup insecurities and our motives blurry far under the sea. --Susan Oleferuk
[untitled] I didn't think I was A brain open to all winds and wild spirits Seized with fears Struggling Constantly In a cell -- A tattered skeleton -- Cudgeling itself with subjects beyond the clouds Sometimes with a kind of satisfying arrogance -- Sometimes with an understanding That barely managed To lay An outsize egg That would roll out of the nest -- Ruth Blumert from the Hebrew: E. Kam-Ron THOUGHTS FOR THE LONGEST NIGHT I have had to face the terrible egotism at the core of all poetry "Husks in the finite, expandable, in each another form in-grows, in-sticks "* Every intimation of wholeness contingent on some caesura. Some limitation. So was/is Creation a showing-forth or a concealment and do we do well to imitate it? To live, I had to join words together hoping thereby to give life. Now, I'm not so sure. Somewhere I cannot see hangs a scale. In the one pan a plethora of poems, the odd good deed perhaps mixed in among them. In the other the harms I have done. Some small. Some maybe not so small. And the waste. And one pan, I cannot see, inclines. -- E. Kam-Ron * "Hüllen im Endlichen, dehnbar,/ in jeder/wächst eine andre
Gestalt fest. " -- Paul Celan, Fadensonnen I Knife-edged dunes 'twixt windward & lee, Ranks in shadow & light ... A sea of sand, or a sandy sea That sets my heart affright. As far as any eye can see -- Wastes of withering light! A tiny speck of nothing, me, Praying for cool of night. II In this world 'twixt windward & lee, Awash in hapless plight ... Resolve, & hope, & decency, As well as will to fight, Succumb to foul despondency In wastes of hellish light. III Even hubris abandons me As arid winds snarl & bite, And Sol climbs to ascendancy Gloating in grim delight, For I am struck with lethargy As life and strength take flight. IV Once in Sol's grip he doth decree -- "You'll never know respite. For though you pray with fervency To speed the Moon & night, Entreating her in urgency To shield you from my light, Her cold can kill as easily -- The cold of desert-night." V Adrift on the sands of a sandy sea, In night or broad daylight, I've lost what was and was to be And think in black-and-white . . . My infinite becomes finite As past and futures flee, For as I die of cold & heat I see what is, and is to be. -- Steven M. Sloan HELL ON EARTH THE HOTTEST HELL IS HERE ON EARTH, I THINK I'VE HEARD IT SAID, . . . OR WAS IT SOMETHING THAT IN SCHOOL I THINK I MIGHT HAVE READ? PERHAPS 'TWAS SOMETHING DREAMT AT NIGHT WHILE DEEP ASLEEP IN BED(?), . . . THAT HELL RESIDES WITHIN THE HEART FROM WHICH ALL HOPE HAS FLED.
-- S.M. Sloan SCHIZOPHRENIA II the paralyzing illness, leveler of hopes and dreams, the shy boy reclusive as a man, the stars reflect in eyes of green. The boy who should have grown to complete manhood, toppled at the age of twenty, circler of streets, the darkness below his angry eyes, the winds of time sound in the church bells, old ogler of beautiful women, too old and sick to do much, worn out and without charm, looking at the world through slits of guilt, trying to wash himself clean of shame, hidden in the dark of still rooms, the smoke of disenchantment.
-- Calvin Green IN THE DARK OF YOUR ROOM I'm afraid of your hands weaving threads of despair into blankets of doom in the dark of your room I would pluck petals toss them in air infuse their perfume in the dark of your room I would offer a moonbow's flash from the sky interlaced on the loom in the dark of your room I would promise my shoulder to cushion your head eclipsing the gloom in the dark of your room I would wrap you in color and dip you in scent herald new bloom in the dark of your room -- ellen THE JUST "Happy is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the wicked, nor stood in the path of sinners, nor sat in the seat of scorners. But his delight is in the Torah of the Lord, and in His Torah does he meditate day and night. " (Psalm 1:1-2) Happy is the climber who finds a way To walk on jagged mountain cliffs, despite The threat of blinding sleet and hail by night, Despite the fear of falling rocks by day. Happy is the sailor who learns a way To stand and steer his ship on course, despite Destructive typhoon winds and rains by night, Despite vast surging tidal waves by day. Happy is the weaver whose loom is blessed With iridescent cloth his fingers weave Both day and night, from multicolored threads; With trembling hands, he sits and makes a vest For climbers and for sailors who believe In words he sews as yellows, blues and reds. -- Yakov Azriel
________________
V. The Silent Channel THE SILENT CHANNEL
On the radio I heard a poet talking about the "silent channel," that hungry Muse who lives in all who refract being through self to show their truth.
Her truth was parents who passed through the valley of the shadow, all-determining event, dark beating chord, underlying our here and now, our place and time.
our dream was other, building, creation.
then that thing irrupted, deep dark, beyond imagination.
Will that thing so stamp us, that nothing else remains? In memorializing the unthinkable will we lose the dream? -- Michael E. Stone THE GAME "123 here I come!" I heard Tatte say in a stage whisper from the hallway. My five year old brother, Yankele, and I were hiding in the cupboard under the stairs under piles of shmattes Mama used back in the days when she still cleaned the floors. I heard the sounds of Tatte opening and shutting cupboard doors in the kitchen. "Where are they?" he said, "Could they be in the larder? No -- not in here." Yankele giggled and I cupped my hand around his mouth. "Shush Yankelush, he'll hear you," I whispered in my brother's ear. "Are they under the bed?" My father's voice rang again, "No not under here. Maybe they're behind the cabinet? Wrong again. Where did those kinderlachdisappear to?" I marveled at how long it was taking for Tatte to find us. Had I have been playing this game with Zelda like I usually did, I have no doubt she would have found us by now. I heard Tatte's heavy footsteps approaching the cupboard door. His shadow blocked the chink of light that was seeping in from the space between the door and the floor. "Hmm, the cleaning closet," came Tatte's voice again, "I wonder if they're hiding in there?" Yankele could no longer suppress his excitement and he let a high-pitched laugh slip from his mouth. I instinctively covered his mouth with my hand again. "What is this?" Tatte said, "The closet is laughing? Since when do closets laugh?" Despite my restraining hand, Yankele erupted into fits of giggles. Tatte opened the closet door. "Aah, it isn't the closet that is laughing, it's the shmattes. I should have known!" He lifted the cloths high in the air and exposed our hiding place. By now Yankele was uncontrollable and grabbing on to me, squealing in delight. Tatte bent down and picked him up, hoisting him over his shoulder. I followed them into the sparse living room where Tatte plopped down into the battered armchair he so treasured. He held Yankele in his arms. "Yankelush, your sister found you a good hiding place and you hid very nicely. Good boy." Tatte smiled and kissed Yankele's forehead. As he held my brother's face in his hands his smile disappeared and was replaced with the same look that Mama had when she heard tzorresabout friends we knew. "I am proud you -- both of you. But you know zeesa kinderlach, when we play the real game, you must remember not to laugh. If you make a sound, the Germans will find you and then you will lose the game." -- Deborah Danan ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF BABI YAR I hear a poem about hope read. I think of the men rounded, 33,000 marched to the edge of the ravine, the blood turning leaves and grass burgundy . I think of my grandparents packing in the night, taking a samovar, some wrinkled apples, then running past straw roo fs on fire. Years before, as if the wind of dead roses let them know something was coming. I think of weeks seasick in steerage, weeks of fog and fog horns, no words to ask for what was ahead. They pulled away, arms waving, those left with streamers tied to the ones on the boat until they snapped, floated, rainbow colors on the surface until black water ate them -- Lyn Lifshin DRILJ - ILZA; THE QUEEN'S TEARS Bonfires burning crop residue cast curls of smoke and scent into the cold air. Red-gold maple and elm leaves bathed in bright sunlight bower the approach road to my mother's shteitle, Drilj. South of Radom I see the signpost in Polish, "Ilza." Nestled in a green valley is the town, narrow winding streets ancient leaning houses and in the distance medieval castle ruins on the barg -- the hill where my mother and her friends played. Beyond the boundaries of time and place, I see her there. Fearless girl, she defies a young sheygitz bullying a heder child. Was it her fiery eyes or her fair girl-child face that vanquished his Jew hatred for that instant? In the here and now, I enter the village to walk the cobbled streets of the Jewish quarter. In Market Square Meir Provizor's house still stands. On the wrought iron balcony of Sabah Meir's house, Zev Jabotinsky joined Zionist meetings. Like Herzl he looked out on the lands of exile and said, "Here will be our tomb." Unwind the hours. Between the red brick and wooden house fronts peasants brandishing pitchforks storm the square. Meir Provizor stands defiant, fists raised. He shouts, "Townsfolk! Neighbors! What are you doing?" My mother and her brothers and sisters huddle under the counter of the family's fabric emporium. Yankel the eldest runs out to the street to pull their father inside. They push the counters forward to bar the wooden doors. Imprisoned for Zionist incitement, when he is released Sabah Meir orders the family to pack -- Sifrei Kodesh and what they can salvage from their lives, from their livelihood. Temporary and enduring, transient and perpetual, of the moment and unceasing, beyond the boundaries of time and place, I am with them on the perilous trek home to Eretz Israel. DRILJ My brother and I would raise eyebrows at our Imma's longings "for the sweet waters of Drilj," and how could a miserable shteitle be so charmed? Beyond the measure of time and death, the transience of life, I beg your forgiveness Imma, for here I am in the beautiful Ilza. Pure spa waters course down the bright mountainside. This is the wooden bridge over the "luskhki," a quiet stream set in the green glen leading to the synagogue -- no longer -- where the family took Shabbat afternoon shpatzirs. Hourglass sands slide forward. It is 1946. The survivors, Imma's childhood comrades and Zionist shuleh classmates, now appear in her dreams.
After such a night, the phone will ring, dear voices will call up from the street below, "Pnina, Pninichka." In our small Bronx flat the beloved faces of Imma's photo album take voice, Night after night, I listen as they relive a shared childhood -- Drilj's bright waters, the happy times. Mute cries tell of the Ilza German Slave Labor munitions camp, of Jewish fingers bleeding from the corrosive burn of gunpowder. Can human voice resonate such endless pain that a six year old child listening in her sleepless bed will forever call it her own? 'ILZA; Queen Casimir's Tears Did King Casimir's bride weep centuries of sweet waters down the jagged hills of Ilza to mourn the destruction of her castle or for the cruel fate of her shteitle's Jews? -- Shira Twersky-Cassel (Provizor) CEREMONY AT THE TRAIN STATION BARDEJOV, SLOVAKIA MAY 15, 2012 The mayor reads his prepared speech about the deportation and the war while schoolchildren stand fidgeting listening to stories of something that happened long before they were born they blink at us strangers and wonder why we have come here I look for you everywhere in this heartbreaking beauty I search for you in the cemetery but the entire row of your generation is missing erased I would have placed my hand on your cheek played games with you as a child ran after you in the square sat on your lap in shul if I had known you grandfather I would place a stone on your grave but there is no grave and not enough stones in the world. -- Dina Jehuda YAD VASHEM
with The Book in my hand and The Name on my lips I cry concrete corridors with displays of death schemes of blood and ashes
I must sit I must breathe return to the letters in The Book black tears on melted white
I am blind, I say, take my hand
I will lead you we will wade through tools of hate the cold, dark narrative harsh forms nightmares alive the screams
I will pull you through to the other side into the sun away from mourning up from the deep gash in the mountain
look -- where the water trickles from the rocks
smell -- the fresh pine needles
hear -- His whispers
now we are cleansed. -- Mindy Aber Barad
THE JEWS OF SAINT JOHN, N.B.
I
The synagogue in Saint John, New Brunswick is for sale, the big sanctuary closed like a barn in winter. The community center is a museum of past glory. Twenty families remain and only a few show at the chapel to carry on the tradition of the fathers.
II
The congregation is so small it doesn't have a Rabbi. The rabbi comes in from Halifax, probably drives to Digby and takes the ferry or he drives all the way. He has to arrive before shabbat or yontiff. He sleeps in the museum with the ghosts of the past. The wind howls a Holocaust melody and he can't sleep.
III
Among the first Jews in Saint John was a Mr. Gales. His children married Christians because there were no other Jews. They assimilated like the lost tribe or the English at Roanoke in the 1600's who created blue-eyed Indians. And will Saint John have circumcised Christians?
IV
There were once over two hundred and fifty Jewish families in Saint John - fourteen hundred souls for God to watch. Now who prays for justice and mercy? Where have all the Jews gone? Are there any left? Will there be a last Jew in Saint John? -- Zvi
A. Sesling MIXED MEDIA OF SPRING sanguine Spring in Newspeak: mass executions, muddied dead bodies butchered families, whole towns whatever happened to land renewed, and dew once upon a Spring frosts mimicked death only silent investment in the future am I the only one left who remembers buds? rustlings after a long dormancy? except for passed over door posts this does not resemble Spring at all. -- Mindy Aber Barad MY GRANDMOTHER'S SKIES For years they dressed me in my grandmother's grey skies, in the oncoming rain of her winter memories. For years spring was forbidden and the sun, when it came, burned a hole in my heart. Despite all their precautions I jumped into the puddles of light and wore the summer sun in my hair like a ribbon. I always knew my grandmother wept for the lost ones, especially for the children, yet even she still looked out at the light of each day with a welcome, thankful to be here. Despite the irony of her dark forebodings, she burned the colors of good memories in her Shabbos candles, and dressed our futures in the hope of fortune and blue skies. -- Estelle Gershgoren Novak SHULAMIT
Return, return, O Shulamit . . . Song of Songs 7:1
Snow blacker than witches covers the camp. Voices lower than whispers echo in the woods. Pelting rain does not wash the ground clean. There, your brush, and combs for your hair, Shulamit, Your velvet purse, your patent-leather shoes. There, an orchestra played, and the lines marched on. Some hacked the snow; others shoveled ashes. Curses darker than wizards' cover the camp. Footsteps softer than foxes' echo far from forest paths. Thunder storms do not drown out their sound. There, liner for your almond-shaped eyes, Shulamit, There, an image of your children, yet to be born.
On eagles' wings you returned to the mountain of myrrh, For blessings, like pearls of dew, cover our Land, Shulamit.
-- Ruth Fogelman TEACHER'S NOTE
There is a Jewish participant in my group
suffering as the daughters of Holocaust survivors suffer,
who sat last night and said:
"The ghost of a nun has twice visited me in the dead of night." (We sleep in Montreal above a crypt, abandoned nuns burned in the hundreds).
You can tell she is convinced this is true (and who am I to say what is true?).
But listening to her account of these nocturnal visits
made it near impossible for me to write a picture book for class, let alone sleep.
In Israel the monsters tend to approach lo aleinu in broad daylight, and in public and to be
on the express lane to the Next World, not returning.
-- Gila Green VI. The Journey Home AT THEBES We strain at ropes to drag great blocks of stone Up winding ramps at Pharaoh's rising tomb, A labor which has been the grueling doom Of thousands since he first took up his throne. We build for Pharaoh's afterlife alone, To seal his mummy in a buried room With all his treasure, ready to assume His place among the magically reborn. When we die we are cast into the sand, Forgotten, vanished into nothingness. It is an empty, hopeless destiny. And yet we build more royal tombs to stand Vast and lonely in the wilderness As if no other kind of world could be. -- David Stephenson RETURN TO THE HOMELAND You soft breezes! Heralds of Italy! And you with your poplars, beloved river! You billowing mountain ranges! O all you Sunny peaks, so it is you again? You still place! In dreams you appeared distant After a hopeless day to the yearning one, And you my house, and you playmates, Trees of the hill, you well-known! How long is it, O how long! The child's peace Is gone, and gone are youth and love and delight; Yet you, my fatherland! you holy one -- Patient one! see, you are still here. And because they are patient when you are patient, rejoice When you rejoice, rear you, dear one! your own also And remind them in dreams, when they wander Far away and stray, the disloyal. And when in his fervid breast the self-mighty desires Of the youth have been soothed And are still before fate, then The mellowed one more gladly gives himself to you. Farewell then, days of youth, you rose-lined path Of love, and all you paths of the wanderer, Farewell! And take and bless you my Life, O heaven of my homeland, again! -- Friedrich Hölderlin from the German: Robert Glen Deamer
CLOSING TOWN A twilight deeper than a summer dusk Is lengthening the shadows of this town, The mill is closed, the company moves on, Whatever does not fall is taken down. Rust-red tobacco barn, the general store, No-longer-needed uproots built-to-last, On dying streets, the people congregate, Each, in their way, bids farewell to the past. As cars crawl out beyond the Mobil sign, The rotting bandstand echoes one last song; Its chorus blares be gone, there's nothing here, Its melody sighs, here's where you belong.
-- John Grey THE DANCE OF THE DEER
In the meadow, the herd danced their dance of young grass the young males on the side, legs tucked under well-brought up guards the does in their Puritan brown still demure in their leaps and stretched necks their sameness the security of sisters their joy for the end of the dark, bare bark and ice-held ground my joy too, but I was not welcome to the rich meadow nor would I ever dance in the kindness of my own kind. -- Susan Oleferuk ANOTHER MARTIAN SENDS A POSTCARD HOME 1 Tunes live on a saucer that never flies When slid into a closet, they wake up 2 Rain turns sunflower leaves into giving hands 3 Yellow scarves flail about as if in wind, then melt into a shrinking pool of blood Which grins like a cat (curled in the hearth) before disappearing 4 Pulleys close thin eyelids against sun 5 Their child sleeps for six days and rages the seventh For comfort they rock it back and forth by its arm It gobbles tidbits from the floor When its stomach fills, they give it a new one -- Susan Richardson A FAILED TEST OF EMUNAH: TOMORROW, I'LL EAT WATERMELON
Sparrows pick stale bread, Before the makolet closes, While children, hunger-animated, sigh, Eyes wide open.
Elsewhere, "Kol Tov " to basil in clay pots, To jarred jasmine, Beneath a lavender sun. Water drips on my merpesset.
Primeval acacias yet bind, Ishmael's brood, More than Avraham's heart: Yitzhak's children await perfection.
The golden onion glowers; Peril's become politicized. Prayers for the Beit HaMikdash, Barely appear in private papers.
In crowds, it's lonely, Loitering for Moshiach, Amongst wisdom-draped fringe, Which sway, rise, and lean on stone.
Today, I woke Yerushalmi. The Kotel was a bus away. The sky was all Shemyim. Tomorrow, I'll eat watermelon. -- KJ Hannah Greenberg
SLICED BREAD Preparing lunch, I discover that a slice of plain white bread, when cut in half, is shaped like the two tablets of the law. And even my son's leaving uneaten ends of bread when rushing off to play suggests the corners of a field and how these gleanings will sustain the poor. -- Steven Sher THE JOURNEY HOME The road Beer-Sheva-Tel-Aviv is shorter than the same road south, being later, straighter, while the other follows the older curvy path. Beside the new, a bush or two, a palm, are claimed as "landscaping," while by the old, the eucalyptus trees, plenish the skyline, whispering
of silver olive leaves, of shedding snake skin bark, of dragonflies. I relish driving north, but oh -- the journey home, the journey home. -- Amiel Schotz IN QUEST OF EL DORADO "He [God] calmed the sea's tempest, and the waves of the sea were stilled.
Then they rejoiced because the waves were silenced; and He brought them to their
desired haven. " (Psalm 107:29-30) Our ship has landed us upon this shore Beside a quiet bay. Beyond the sand There stretches out a vast, uncharted land Not one of us has ever seen before. Dare I become a brave conquistador Who does not fear to seize the upper hand In search of fabled wealth and lead a band Of men across broad plains we must explore? You've brought us to the continent of faith, My God, extending like a coral reef No diver has revealed. But I've been told That if we climb faith's mountain peaks and bathe In unpolluted rivers of belief, We might yet reach Jerusalem of Gold. -- Yakov Azriel I'm not interested in planets speed of lights away want to know whether King David saw the same sky as me what Rachel wore to the wedding feast Was the sky different three thousand years ago In the harbor soft waves lap against the boardwalk fishermen cast poles where there's a restaurant a king once walked
-- Lois Michal Unger
In the beginning the Shechina was in a tent, In your yesterday and in the morning you renew the present salvation. Here are physical boundaries that limit and infinite spiritual ones You the city which as a lung-heart breathes and beats in all of us.
-- Hayim Abramson BLUSH FIELDS
I have seen the terraced fields blush pink at the sun's dawn wink
I have heard the birds In harmony With the bells of goats Despite the stony silence Of the camels
I have watched the fog creep And shrug shoulders around The boulders and trees Before it tugs itself away Into the day. -- Mindy Aber Barad
_________________________
VII. The Mountain Says
DOORS AND ARCHES Some look for redemption in water or hurl over burning coals to test their ardor. For me salvation lies through the doors and arches of a painting in the back room of a gallery on 5th Street. Weekly I visit the narrow picture as necessary as our summer pilgrimages to my Aunt Fanny in Brooklyn to pay our respects. At the far end a small window opens on a stubble of grass. Thorns pierce the canvas, masquerading as flecks of paint on a vine that twists over slats of fence. Ghosts of huckleberries droop like the chins of schoolchildren. caught stealing penny candy. You could arrest me as an intruder as I slink through the painting rooms off its hallway belonging to someone else but I take nothing, disturb no one. Such devotion is rare in this city where rosary beads break amid scandal over the tiles of St. Vibiana's Cathedral while in my box of family treasures . the knots of my father's tallis unravel even as we speak. -- Carol V. Davis
[tallis: Jewish prayer shawl] The spirit moves from wrong to wrong, from harm to harm done others in a moral mess, an aged man's a stick within a coat of impotence of age and rage unless. Unless exactly what? you may enquire. Unless precisely what kind of a thing? Unless restored by that refining fire. Unless soul clap its hands, oh clap and sing. So Yeats and Eliot say life is just the same address, about six feet of dust, more a burial than life unless I can refine my scabs of flaking rust. I will remain a stick six feet in height, merely vertebral support for clothes, unless soul clap its hands and get me done serving the time I serve. Excuse me, those spirit hands and my flesh will are un- connected by a nerve, though I today am connected wifi to all lands. How does one call up his spirit hands and bid them clap and not hold back but clap in some refining serious hurray spring destickment into rising sap? How to access a joy so far away?
-- John Milbury-Steen Where then are you, moments of grace, when all becomes right, all in a total confluence into a singular whole, like a flawless rock-crystal in which the universe is incarnate and manifest, like some unheard-of, inaudible music that wafts down from the spheres. Alas, the rock-crystal is flawed, the music screeches, and nothing is right any longer, all is unwhole. -- Haim Schneider
THE MOUNTAIN SAYS How taciturn the airless hours are no longer mine a pile of conjectures besieged by distance of a mute grey sky exposing a snagged life like Sisyphus unable to rise even from repetition let alone reputation, only believing there were those who heard poetry from the ancients in a voice on high. -- B.Z. Niditch AN EARLY ZIONIST He grabbed a fistful of Israeli soil a mixture of ancient dirt and ashes settled on the ground from the skies of Europe and pointed his fist to the sky and cried how could You? Now help us or get out of the way!
-- Drew Nacht A SECRET HOPE OF TEXTURES It makes one tender and aligned / getting out of the car because of traffic / a hidden marsh by the base of some road / one hundred shades of green are wanted / bodies spread out in the thicket / sand slipping into very hip boots again / curly hair bobbing along ahead / clear above the salty brush line / it is a little patch of wilderness / the mire leads to the beach / the beach is part of the Sound / and the Sound connects to the ocean / where it all unites with the sky / knowing what lives in the distance / still believing in the swamp / squishing mud and grass underfoot / hoping that the world won't go / away and away forever / until the colors turn unrecognizable / lately thinking suffocation under so much oil/humpback whales that can't breathe / water is sick around the continent / go help wash the creatures' backs / liquid dish soap is so strange / it would make anyone cry to do / we have to cry its good to feel/and know what is really happening / but still to be so grateful for / one hundred shades of green / a bog plushy with wild flora / the best that has ever even been smelt / no sense to anything but tall grass / a companion to pass over land / so wide or miniature to size / it is large in our minds / in marsh as in a lover's bed / everything fits together just right / bodies spread out in the thicket / all is beautiful for a moment / still walking in the swamp / squishing mud and grass underfoot / it makes one tender and aligned / because on the surface there always lies / a secret hope of textures
— Alexis Wolf
REVIVAL OF THE POETIC SELF
From the darkness there are yellow and orange rays of illumination. Geese fly overhead murmuring muffled sounds in the sunrise over the lake. Angel tears melt into the morning mist. Searching for the poetic self takes time. Our souls move slowly as we process our observations of the natural world.
Fast paced rhythms of time beat quicker each day depleting our energy. Media and metal mini phones trump our solitude. Noise and clutter drown out our ability to think with clarity.
Peaceful prayers heal our inner selves with tranquility. The heavenly white light centers the well of being. Retreat into trance states and restore the inner vision. Music uplifts the spirit, so we can move beyond the present moment.
Set aside the traps of modern man. Move into seclusion and create an orderly sacred space. Our voices will speak out again. Breathe new life and sustenance into the bones and sinews, Nature beckons us to listen and learn. Watching the waves wash in creates strength and wholeness again. Hope awakens us to realize that the truth lives within.
--Shoshanah Weiss-Kost
EVIDENCE OF THINGS UNSEEN The difference between carnivores and those who eat only plants is part of it. Empathy is in the works even when spoken in whispers. These things converse with trees, call them from their wooden sleep to restart their green machinery. They are in the dance going on between the oceans and the moon, the way wind moves from one space to another, in the secret knowledge that helps salmon return to their place of birth, dogs and cats to cross entire continents just to return home. The unseen are everywhere. Their evidence is in what makes music possible and why art has such a mind of its own. If none of this convinces you, think of time. We do not see it and do not know if we are traveling through it or whether it is passing among us choosing who will go to the right and who to the left. -- Fredrick Zydek THE BAAL-TESHUVAH "The Lord knows the thoughts of man -- that they are vanity." (Psalm 94:11) I thought I'd have to put aside my eyes In order to believe, and put aside My brain, because belief in God had died I thought, when hearing helmsmen eulogize Its recent death or imminent demise. The sea of faith was shrinking and its tide Had surely turned, so I felt justified Surmising that its shallows swarmed with lies. Or so I thought. For I was full of pride, Self-confident the human mind was wise Enough to analyze the brine of life. Oh what a fool I was, my God, to hide Behind this mask and wear this cheap disguise, While stabbing oceans with a pocket-knife. -- Yakov Azriel
BLESSING OF THE SUN April 8, 2009
Blessed are you who makes the work of creation. We make this blessing once every twenty-eight years on an early April morning to praise the creation of the sun, on the fourth day, in its first position.
We make this blessing once every twenty-eight years, enough time to have moved along in our lives like the sun in earth's day, in reversed position, amazed at its travels across the sky.
Time is enough to move us along in our lives even if we stay still as the sun amazed at its travels across a sky that does the work of turning while it burns.
Even if we stay still as the sun, even without reference for our movement, we do the work of turning while we burn our gathered sugars in a gorgeous flame.
Even without reference for our movement, our spheres of influence are each a planet. We gather sugars till the gorgeous flames of autumn burn and crumble into soil.
Our spheres of influence are each a planet springing into life on one half only as autumn burns the other to crumbs and soils the green unfolding and the new life blazing.
Springing into life on one half only makes you dizzy, like a child's spinning. The green's unfolding and a new life's blazing, evolving here to still another translation
that makes you dizzy, like a child's spinning on an early April morning. To praise the creation, still evolving, here's another translation: blessed you make the making of the beginning. -- Courtney Druz
THE RELAY for C.D.
I hoped to write a poem about the sun After the ceremony of the blessing, Waited for a line but it did not come. Another sign, I guess, of powers lessening.
Twice before, as a girl almost grown, And later, as a woman just past prime, I might have met that ray, had I but known; Likely it will not find me here next time.
But now I've read the song I'd wished to write In the voice of another, younger by one turn Of that great wheel. Then let me bless G-d's might By which the powers that leave with me return.
Bless G-d, there will be sky, there will be sun, There will be song when my brief stave is done. -- E. Kam-Ron ELEANOR AND HICK Yosemite, July 1934 High in the Sierras, land of waterfalls and granite faces reaching to a height of thirteen thousand feet (that beauty captured in photography by Ansel Adams), here, two women camped and contemplated their lives, their loves, and most of all their destinies. Here, too, famously, her Uncle Ted had spent a night with one John Muir beholding God's playground, pledging to keep it safe from the ravaging hand of greed. But for Eleanor, it was a time to choose between the private life she longed for and the public life she had come to contemplate. Hick, less athletic than the president's lady, overweight, a smoker, panting at the height, found she was reporter no longer, only a friend. Attended by their guides, they dodged reporters, fled the peering eyes of celebrity hunters. The president himself was off somewhere in the Pacific, Hawaii perhaps, his letters following his mate's adventures. Eleanor had borne him children, five still living. Reluctant First Lady, Hick was later to call her, sharing her memories of her famous friend. Sleeping under a heaven full of stars gives pause, and when she came away, rejoining her husband in San Francisco, she knew. The past -- a wife and mother; the present -- deep depression and a nation's poverty; the future still to come -- a world at war, the rights of Negro children. These were commitments she had yet to make. "What should I have done, Hick? " she asked. "I've been betrayed by my one true love. " "I know. " "I offered him divorce." "Out of the question, for an ambitious man." "We reconciled, and then the paralysis . . ." "No one could fault you, Eleanor." "I'm so pleased for him, but for myself . . ." "It would be pleasant, just to disappear." "Did you know that Alice always made fun of me?" "Your cousin? I wouldn't doubt it." "And Aunt Edith . . ." "I've given up a career or two myself." "Women will have to learn to stop bickering." "Tell me about it." "Hick, I've never had such a friend as you." "I'll always be here for you." "That's good to know." And so their conversation might have gone, or not. Perhaps it needn't have been said at all. Friends share sometimes in silence what won't spill out in words. At any rate, she came down from the mountain renewed, committed to a very public life, reluctantly. -- Nancy M. Fisher
SN'EH
The morning bush awakes to the dry desert Does not guess that today it will burn in the fire and not be consumed What was in your future? Would you have been like tumbleweed before the wind A powder of dry twigs, to be reabsorbed into the elements? You were immortalized in words. You are not entitled to applause. You did not know your eternity, nor the revelation revealed by and in you. A desert shrub, almost inanimate You put up no barriers, you could be a clear mirror You would have been consumed in a minute In you great mercy and fire are reconciled. -- Tziporah Lifshitz from the Hebrew: E. Kam-Ron [sn'eh (Hebr.): bush] ****************************************** A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT
AMENDMENT 28 for the 28 dead of Newtown WHEREAS, the principle of freedom of speech Was meant to shelter conscience and debate, Not license spectacles and words that teach Crimes against human persons, furnish hate With mental images a certain few In the large audience will imitate; WHEREAS, it has been shown that crimes ensue When crimes are publicized in their detail And pictures and accounts of those who do The crimes, are widely shown, or where the tale Of heinous acts can bring the felon gain; WHEREAS, such practices break down the pale Of life, the foremost right, and thus make vain Pursuit of happiness, and liberty; And WHEREAS, harmful speech tends to restrain Legitimate speech, from fear no longer free; THEREFORE, it is declared that governments, State, local, federal, have authority To ban such works by law and ordinance, As breaches of the peace, whereby alleged Artistic merit shall be no defence, Since to life's service all true art is pledged. -- E. Kam-Ron
[Note: The above will be posted, G-d willing, at www.stopdeadlyspeech.org.] ****************************************** 12. The Wander Root Court
In the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first of the month, right here, right now, it has been long enough.
Turn and enter--whichever way you are facing, turn and enter.
What has already bloomed is old; the fruit in the unopened bud is what you will bring.
Come with me to the field where the trees are budding.
We will tend them as they flower, we will lodge in the villages, we will note the first fruits ripening there and designate them for God.
*
Adorn them with ribbons, prepare the bowls.
Pare your own slice of the pebble moon and fill it.
Carry it on your shoulder as you translate your story.
*
Come and build what you must build.
It is authorized to you. It is not too late.
-- Courtney Druz from her book The Light and the Light (2012)
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Know, reader, what the elder poets knew and what the distant disk of Earth now tells us: that all things have their limit and their term and in that term and limit is their form, their beauty, and the laws which give them life, shaping the energy which otherwise would lose itself in boundless dissipation. – George Richter The Consciousness of Earth
Adrienne Rempel, Ochre Form/ oil on canvas / 18" x 23"/ 2012
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