My father is dying,
refusing treatment to extend his life.
“I have lived long enough” he pronounces,
disposed too easily to drama.
But I refuse to tempt him with futures
of weddings yet undanced
and progeny to yet embrace.
For it is from him I have learned that life is to be braved not cherished
and elation be met with equanimity,
Thus I know that promises of joy hold no sway.
Note: My father has since passed away adamant to the end.
I once said that I had no photographs from
before the War,
that is not exactly true.
We have a photograph of a rooster strutting
in my great-grandfather’s yard.
It belongs to my six-year daughter now,
She calls it the “Rooster from Serednye”.
On hot summer nights,
when she wakes,
and I have yet to sleep,
I sit at the foot of her bed
and ask her to tell me the story of
the rooster from Serednye,
but she drowses off instead.
Note: We have a picture of a rooster but it is from a more recent trip there. That my daughtrer cherishes the photo means that maybe she also has part in the narrative, or is it better that I let her sleep.
I cannot say I am happy this moment,
for I am too preoccupied to know.
After, I suppose, I could know,
but it has no import then,
the past is no matter
in the face of the impending future.
It may be that part of me is happy now,
I cannot say.
Later in the silence if I reach out
its residue might remain
if it has not burrowed below
and I will trace its contour
before the jagged tomorrow.
Note: Joy in retrospect. I spent my son’s entire wedding trying to connect to the joy that I felt was supposed to be but I was too overwrought to feel.
Asleep in my arms yet not at peace, claws the air and stirs calling my name but does not wake.
I wonder what demons has he that threaten sleep,
to cause him to thrash about.
I wish to banish those who wound his soul
to clasp him near and hurl them into the night forever.
But tomorrow he will wrestle his demon again
as did his namesake Jacob long ago
a disquietude visited upon the generations.
I had wished him to be a charmed being
His life untarnished by bitterness, his laugh unblemished by anguish
But now I fear that he has not been spared,
That I have bestowed not only my features but fears and passions as well
So now I wish him a child with lustrous eyes
Note: This is the only poem not written recently but in the 80’s as part of a creative writing course. Rereading it I realize how 2g it actually is. So I put it in. The Biblical reference is Jacob wrestling the Angel from Genesis.
Her mother away,
the child spoke on the phone,
and her voice cracked,
I miss you.
And through the rend flowed
the vulnerability and the fear
as if she might fall.
But quickly recovering
she straightened
closing the rend
smiling with glistening eyes.
It reminded me of children past
tutored to be impervious,
criss-crossing the cracks
with layer upon layer
nothing exposed,
sturdying the wall
against the churning inside
and eyes that would not glisten.
Note: My daughter Re’ut during my wife’s trip to Europe.
A common plaint I hear from 2g’s is that they would never have dared to treat their
parents the way their children treat them. That may not be totally bad.
As I child I was taught
that ours is an existence
of sadness and tears,
of anger and to few embraces,
of forgotten pasts and futures uncertain.
I have since laid awake
at nights remembering pasts
I want to forget
and at dawns previewing stumblings
at obstacles yet encountered.
I spend my days
wading in the ripples
casting about for moments of happiness
tinged with melancholy
Note: I think you have to be taught how to be happy. Most Survivor families were not happy places and we have problem feeling joy. Which is why my favorite poem is “Joy” by Robinson Jeffers.
Though joy is better than sorrow joy is not great;
Peace is great, strength is great
Not for joy the stars burn, not for joy the vulture
Spreads her gray sails on the air
Over the mountain; not for joy the worn mountain
Stands while years like water
Trench his long side. "I am neither mountain nor bird
Nor star; and I seek joy."
The weakness of your breed; yet at length quietness
Will cover those wistful eyes.
I was wounded,
I am wounded,
I wound.
It need not be this way, I suppose.
For the fortunate, there is the possibility of healing-
I was once wounded but no longer,
but even not, one can choose not to continue the pain –
I am wounded but will not wound,
as in the words of Hillel the elder
“That which hateful to you,
refrain from doing to another”
Painfully simple,
facile like the scrawled “ I will not disturb in class”
on the classroom chalkboard,
thirty times.
For what is hateful is nearest,
what is hateful is most familiar,
what is hateful rises to the fore.
without the fury.
It was best to go without than to face the scorn,
to chance repudiation.
Sometimes, famished, I would choose,
In any case, to approach,
disguising my turmoil,
effacing the wounds,
so as to be worthy of his love.
Note: We learn to be parents from our parents and the abuses of our childhood seem to crop up a generation on with its attendant recriminations.