VII. Stretch of Road

 
Immigrant

 
First he was a peddler;
notions, dry goods, secondhand clothes,
learning English along the way.
 
He traveled unknown roads,
through small towns,
taking pictures, making a living.
 
He headed south.
Wandering through a small Georgia town,
he rested for a moment to get his bearings.
 
The silk of his skullcap 
shimmered in the setting sun.
He heard a voice calling, Landsman?
 
It was Friday, almost sundown 
when the stranger approached,
a warm welcome, Sabbath dinner, a day of rest.
 
He never went farther. 
He felt the call of a glimmer of candles,
a head bowed in prayer.
                                                                   —Sharon Lask Munson
 
 
 

The scholar unbound

 

Beyond the cobblestones of journeys past

Of twisted roads and rusted railroad tracks

An old Ford station wagon was your car

Of choice. You still retained a monkish air

Your former name was Brother Francis X

But we always called you just plain Harry

No last name, no known family relations

Rumor had it that you had a brother

In Oregon (or was it New Zealand?)

Perhaps you went to live with him. Or not.

One day you were gone, no note, no fanfare,

As quietly as you lived among us.

No one could equal your erudite love for

Latin, Hebrew, Syriac, ancient Greek,

Did you find your home? Belonging elsewhere

You left us a lesson in humbleness.

 

                                               —Brenda Appelbaum-Golani

                                                   March 2022

 

 

Aminadav to Avigdor

The Philosopher in Search of an Audience

 

I ‘d hoped you wouldn ‘t mind a little company today,

my friend, along this empty stretch of road.

I was humming to myself back there, as ever,

when I spied you up ahead, or truth be told,

when the jangling of your strange festoonings

reached my ear, and I picked up the pace

until this swaying armature of yours at last

danced sparkling into view like a ghostly ship.

 

I ‘m a little out of breath just now, perhaps,

but nothing seems to curb my endless prattle

unless it be some mumbling thought

or murmured melody that silences the words,

yet stirs this constant melismatic noise I seem to be,

so please don ‘t hesitate to give some sign or sound

you ‘d rather walk alone in silence now,

and rest assured I ‘ll presently be moving on.

 

Yes? No? It ‘s good to have at least the genial jingle

of these wares of yours for company, this lofty tree

of companionable pots and tools and furnishings

that flashes, swings and lurches in the narrow lane,

and feel free to say if you ‘d prefer this reticence

to the language of men, perhaps, or that you ‘re content

with this music of the cart-track, the whispering air,

the clattering pots, the shuffle of your threadbare soles.

 

So I was just thinking as I walked along back there,

if by any chance you ‘d care to hear, that these roads

we ‘re on all seem to lead us outward from the living noise

of speech and fear, this vivid world of urgent purposes

and needs, pressing forward into the beating heart

of the inanimate, the pulsing breath of what is not alive

and never was, toward what the world calls death,

but which I envision as the oceanic grandeur

and soulless pulsing element of all things living.

 

And that all these roads are bridges, I was thinking,

and that every shuffling life that hurries in the lane

is itself a bridge as well, into the vast inanimate,

and that the business of the traveler, his only real job,

is to witness all the bright collisions that bind us

to this vast unfeeling world, invite the chisel to the stone,

unlock the crystal ‘s light, and call down flashing plasmas

to emblazon, be it briefly, the turbid, basculant air.

 

Your silence seems to indicate I may have lost you, friend,

with these mad meanderings of mine, so I ‘ll be moving on

along this senseless, never-ending path of ours, and choose

to understand your reticence as tacit validation, and listen,

as I  hurry on ahead, for the happy disappearing tune that copper,

brass and potmetal makes, your armillary ‘s arbitrary music,

a melody like starlight, brighter than speech, clearer than thought,

this insensate jingling matter set to rocking with your step.

 

                                                                                                         —DB Jonas

 

 

 

LUFTMENSCHN 

Our lives we do not weep / Are like wild cigarettes

That on a stormy day / Men light against the wind

Malcolm Lowry, Men with coats thrashing

We are the people of another country,

Encountered (never on the way to any place)

in every darvish-dance of foil and cellophane 

that sweeps the sidewalk ‘s stricken face.

 

You ‘ve sensed us hunched in doorways,

cowled and billowed as a bellied sail,

glimpsed a match-lit cheekbone in a hollow hand 

and recognized your hunger ‘s lambent shell.

 

Indigent of agenda, our incandescent ash 

weaves a feeble torchlight through the town

to cast peculiar glamour in the glistening street 

once all the midnight revelers have gone.

 

We drift among the waste-heat exhalations 

of the city, the emanations of a subway stair,

elisions from the stream of jostling bodies,

abstractions you may never know are there.

 

And lest the startling emptiness alarm you, 

rest assured that we ‘re not here to harm you,

since we don ‘t seek what you possess or want,

idling in the passageways your dark desires haunt.                

                                                                         —DB Jonas

 

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