|
VI. Not on the News Nothing Added “May my heart fulfill Your laws that I will never be ashamed” (Ps. 119:80)
It's all there in the package, nothing too fancy. A plain, wrapping, not ostentatious. The outside
The same as the inside. Yes, according to the way the Manufacturer made it, and it works
all the time. Every morning I open it, lay it down, arrange the parts as per the rules and I go through the day, know what to do where I find myself, and never confused. Everything’s clear before me,
understood, no problems, and it’s fine. It’s fair, it’s good. They explain unexpected things, yet, even so,
no matter, it’s no bother to anyone, even me. At the close of the day I retire. —Zev Davis
THE COVERING
The moment at which everything stops always begins at the end of the search I hold in my hand the long piece of cloth the way one grasps a child so he won’t get lost I step into my inner sanctum stand before a mirror cracked like a land thirsty for water that drinks its inhabitants. My image silent like a singer with sealed lips a moment before the note, a moment before the kindness and it’s as if my body begins to dance broken movements all too familiar. All my curls, shaken free, are laughing exuding lightness and fragrance to the point of deceit, to the point where the sun’s rays turn, dripping gold at my delayed visit I let them play with me, with my wishes like two- or four-year-old yelling children a last glance like eyes that follow the beloved till he disappears over the horizon like a bird looking at summer a moment before the desired journey. And then I submit I gather them one by one like a shepherd guiding his flock slowly wind a snail shape now it kisses my head tight and silent I choose a few folds to surround my face, to caress my skin and flutter with the wind so that I’ll know, just so that I’ll know I take a ribbon, it establishes the humility that I don’t have it covers some of the haughtiness and also some of the light it’s time, the moment when everything stops has arrived my hands with the scarf, the center point like the point to which I belong, one and precise I spread my hands like a priestly blessing place them on my head, set it firmly, as if I had wrapped myself in compassion covering my innocence with a faded colorfulness I’ve used more than once covering my hair like a blessing on the fruits of the garden and there is a caress from right to left and a caress from left to right like the crossed hands of Jacob I am now marvelously precise I carry my head my freedom a gentle knot, not tight brings time back to its bad habits I am a lily. —Shira Mark-Harif tr. E. Kam-Ron
[untitled]
Get up in the morning, go to work Write precise lines Watching Every letter, comma and period; In the afternoon—play, Draw smiles on a baby’s face, String big round rhymes That roll with laughter into corners The children gather them with their little hands Astonished by the sounds. In the evening curl up Between soft words and long spaces And then fall asleep In front of a heap of blank pages. —Chani Fruchtman tr. E. Kam-Ron
THE SPARK
For now I’m in the tunnel No thief crawls toward me The moles and the bats have withdrawn into themselves And an unsympathetic spider spins in the entrance The ants that climb on me I remove with care They are capable of a sticky friendship I wait for a foot that will tear the webs Distant echoes of hooves Things rustle by overhead I’m buried alive The spark within me is more patient than the ants Richer than any firefly When I’m not listening to the sounds I talk with it As with my God And it does not answer, but listens. —Ruth Blumert tr.: EC
LOVE STORY
Once a couple kissed, both went to work for the day but wasn’t on the news. —Hayim Abramson
THE WOODEN TRUCK
Just a wooden truck little but the only one. It was the toy I had and it was gone.
I am old now my wife bought cars of wood—I lighted up— Ah! that little one—let it be mine! —Hayim Abramson
A PARABLE & A PARABOLA Parabolic: [1] of or like a parabola, and / or [2] allegorical.
She never flunked out; she was a B-minus, C-plus, C-minus student. Her one “F” was in French, and wasn’t an “F” anyhow the capital letter of “French”? He never came close to flunking out--a strictly B-plus, B-minus student. He was Pareve—neither Milchig nor Fleishig. They intersected in that B-minus territory—he not too brilliant and she not too dull. Her father: Head Professor of Physics at a Top-Ten University in the Mid-West. His father: top physicist for The Government, rumored to have been with The Manhattan Atom Bomb Project, previously living in the desolated deserted distant Los Alamos—a rumor, for sure. There were hush-hush stories how his parents secretly imported a Mohel from far-away Chicago on a very circuitous route—for sure non-direct—out to Arizona or New Mexico to do a circumcision on a First Born Son, as no outsider should know about their deep top secret underground warrens of Building-the-Bomb activities. The baby boy himself barely had a Bar Mitzvah thirteen years later, corning from an almost-assimilated family ... She & He—wealthy suburbanite junior-high “temple” non-Kosher Jewish youth group sweethearts, dated each other exclusively and virtuously all through high school, engaged the first year of college, married a year later. She, the college drop-out, not a flunk-out, but hanging in there with her C-pluses and B-minuses, so that at least he’d finish his B.A. They never spoke of math or money as their well-off parents were footing the bill and all .expenses paid for the three grandchildren born within five years of the young marriage. I was making my way, half-way cross-country U.S.A., East Coast to Mid-West, to inwardly silently say good-bye to my Stateside birthplace before immigrating back to my Holy Land Homeland. Friends of friends of mine set me up for Sabbath hospitality with this off-campus couple, so seemingly phlegmatic, whose passions poured forth into their progeny. Not an easy handful—the eldest kid wasn’t necessarily retarded, but was terribly clumsy and slow. The middle one, bright but hyperactive, seemed neither diagnosed nor drugged. Third one —nebbach—a beautiful baby, seemed perfect, but I was shocked to hear afterwards that the baby had Tay-Sachs disease and was edging towards degeneration and a very likely shortened life-span. I sucked in my breath, envisioning the young couple, childhood sweethearts, younger than I, maybe having to sit Shivah for their beautiful and beloved child, a few years henceforth. By then I would be terribly busy as a young social worker in Jerusalem in a hospital during the 1973 Israeli Yom Kippur War ... Their old wooden frame house—bought by their parents as a joint wedding present for their “college kids”—had seen better days. It was fixed up but superficially so. I nearly tripped on their thick shaggy wall-to-wall carpet and hugged my shoulders to keep warmer. Their home was warm in a family way, but chilly in a drafty way. The husband / father carne home from Sabbath Eve prayers elated and defeated, a B-minus, B-plus, B.A. Student. His eldest ran in slow motion, the middle one at high speed, and the youngest kicked in cuddly booties with feet that wouldn’t be running in a few years. The other guest—a younger undergraduate—and I, patiently waited while our hostess set the table, as she wouldn’t accept help from first-time guests, though I offered to do so. The man of the household finally made Kiddush after struggling in a monotone to sing Shalom Aleichem to the angels and “A Woman of Valor” to his wife whose wig was dangling at a dangerous angle off her tired pretty baby-face with dark circles under her eyes. Jump-starting they were, from non-observant Jewish country-club bagel-and-lox university-educated families to becoming born-again borderline early 1970’s rural state-capital small-town American Chassidim. We all traipsed back and forth over the shaggy carpet, over the old wooden saggy floorboards for our ritual hand-washings, after Kiddush over Kosher wine. Host and hostess were struggling to be grown-ups as their minds wandered back to their meeting as overgrown children at age 14, a decade earlier: then without Kiddush, without libations, without motsei lechem over the challah raisin-breads, without Kosher cuisine, without Mikveh, without Hebrew, without Sabbath or Sabbath guests, without a Kehillah, without daily prayers, without the monthly New Moon, without benedictions over all foods, without wigs, without wall-to-wall carpets on saggy floors. Soup time finally came. Our hostess dutifully and lovingly served her husband, bypassing their mildly fussy baby in the highchair, another one running berserk, and another one wandering aimlessly in a tipsy way. I offered to serve the other guest and the hostess finally compromised and let me serve myself, which was a struggle over the carpet on a wobbly floor with cluttered toys. She then rushed to serve the guest his clear broth in a broad shallow china bowl, as fast as a tired young woman could rush, and in a tiny split-second while she maneuvered the saggy floor, his whole serving sailed out of the bowl in a perfect parabola through the heated chilly air onto and into the shaggy carpet, unknown to the lady of the house whose eyes were fixed elsewhere. She plodded along rapidly, her wig flopped precariously and she quietly and quickly set the empty bowl in front of the undergrad, while he and I somehow successfully did not gasp out loud. The host was busy with his soup and his soup nuts, unseeing the whole scenario. The hostess, also unseeing, gracefully sat down to have her serving. The guest had an empty but damp bowl set before him. He and I rapidly flickered our eyes back and forth at each other as he quickly tilted his empty bowl towards his whitened face and pretended to slurp down his serving at high speed to finish his soup before it “cooled down.” I did the same with my real serving. Our Sabbath dinner continued uneventfully ... Later, the husband and wife stumbled competently to put their kids to sleep while we guests cleared the table. Shabbat
Shalom, ministering angels of peace. Come again and go again, Angels of Peace.
Come again, curve again, bend about again; form parabolas round about
again Last Life, This Life, Next Life too. —Sue Tourkin Komet
|