Part of me is enamored with new beginnings,
a collator of fledgling lives, which I try to join
into a jangling entity of conjunctive lines,
a cubist reality of a life.
Beginnings not of small chiselings
but of grand new directions,
dismissing smoothed crimps and folds,
for the unblemished,
and sending what was before clattering to the floor
with a disdainful sweep of an arm.
I say this because I am traveling to where I was born and left,
to return only now.
There is no better place to start a life again, I surmise,
than where you were born.
There I had a tiny blue wrist tag
(boy) Hersk. it said,
hardly even a name to limit my realms.
There I will ask for another tag of endless potentialities
and fold it over and around,
a chrysalis to be clutched to my heart.
And there, before the expanse of newborns,
I will recite all the names I have accumulated during my lives,
Each name forming a vaporous relic on the window of the nursery,
to then dissipate.
As these vestiges fade, I remain with but
the uncharted possibilities of the unnamed,
and I can walk out into a town in which no one knows me
and presume to start anew.
Note: I am always promising myself new beginnings like first drafts crumpled up to be started again on a fresh sheet. The inspiration for this poem was an invite to read my poetry at the Boundaries Conference in 2001 in Chicago which is also the city in which I was born. An invitation for another new beginning where I can pretend to start anew. “But you can travel on ten thousand miles and still stay where you are” - Harry Chapin a”h
At the bus stop the stranger pointed at me in recognition,
and I looked to the ground.
Undaunted he came and shook my hand, his silver-framed glasses askew.
"Let me finish my say then you can speak," he said
"May God bless you three blessings:
That you join in the building of the third Temple,
that you live to see your children and grandchildren under the wedding canopy
that all your enemies be vanquished.
I am mentally ill,
Please give me some money so I can go to Yehezkel’s grocery
And buy some food."
Which I did.
Some would dismiss this incident but I have not.
You see, my mother stood on the frigid muddied ground of Auschwitz,
whose cursed soil petrified generations of lives
and I like to think that now God sends his peculiar messengers to bless me,
and resuscitate my soul.
Note: The Midrash says that from the Temple’s destruction, prophecy has been taken from the prophets given to the mentally ill and children
I allowed myself little emotion in the shadow of Auschwitz.
My hunger crowded by a reality filled
with the hunger of then,
my fears dwarfed to unworthiness.
It was better to not feel than to share in its shame.
Shredding the fabric of reality to build a nest of denial,
I concealed my feelings beneath,
muffling the disquiet.
But today I burrow to free them,
for a hunger can never be sated unless it is known,
nor a fear smitten until it is named.
So I clasp them to my heart in furrowed fists
praying that when I might unclench.
they will wither.
Note: I have some poems that believe in catharsis and some do not. This one does.
I went to say goodbye to my parents
when they left the country.
My mother was busy the entire visit
packing up the leftovers
so I hardly had a chance to say goodbye.
“Hurry home before the dairy products spoil”
was the last thing she said, as she closed the door.
I stood in the parking lot
laden with Tupperware
feeling alone.
The next day I sat hunched over her reheated soup,
my hands encircled the bowl,
warming my fingers,
steam rising about my face,
as I waited for the soup to cool.
It has taken too much of a lifetime
to learn to live in a family
where you eat soup
instead of saying goodbye.
Note: Survivor families have issues with connecting and also with food.
Here I combine them. You have to learn to connect with the warmth in all its variant forms.
When asked about growing up in a survivor family a lot of 2g’s use the example of the glass being half empty or half full. I, instead, prefer to deal with the question is the soup bowl half empty or half full.
If healing is the absence of pain,
of sorrow,
then there is no healing.
For memory is everywhere
and memory is pain.
The scent of ash is memory,
a plank of wood is memory,
even a faded gray is memory too,
and memory is sorrow.
Perhaps there is healing within this sadness,
a sorrow that tinges not darkens,
a pain that staggers but does not subdue.
This too is healing,
for I can do no more
or less.
Note: One must hold onto the Holocaust with all its pain and trauma because it is a sin to forger. What healing is possible with these memories? This poem was originally written about a tragic death within our family and adapted to a 2g poem.
I used to believe in dirges and incantations
of crumbling one’s pain in between lines on a page.
and thus find its end.
But with the years the sadness remains and
silence sets where there had once been words
And moments grace not remedy rise from the lines
Part of my Mother died in the Uzgorod Ghetto,
another in Auschwitz .
I have struggled in my life to know if to mince and macerate myself
to fill her void.
But I wish to speak now about redemptions,
as I am going soon to Auschwitz.
And there on its paths, it is only fitting to ponder
inhumanity and hate,
human nature and fate.
but I will not.
I will consider instead myself, and my mother,
and our struggles to discover,
Each in our limitedness,
a measure of closure,
a measure of peace.
petty redemptions like tin.
Note: The title comes off a soft drink can. I traveled to Auschwitz with an Arab-Jewish delegation. A group of Israeli Arabs wanted to understand our pain as a step in reconciliation and all our preparation were tinged with an expectation of a historic event. (See Article: Auschwitz Diary) I joined not so much for ideology but the chance to go to Auschwitz and have closure with my family’s history. At the same time I went to a conference with some current Jewish writers. The non-2g’s seemed to write about these large philosophical issues and the 2g writers wrote about their mothers.