I am now posting poetry at http://www.sstte.org/poetry-corner.html. Thank you!
Autumn is always too early.
The peonies are still blooming, bees are still working out ideal states, and the cold bayonets of autumn suddenly glint in the fields and the wind rages. What is its origin? Why should it destroy dreams, arbors, memories? The alien enters the hushed woods, anger advancing, insinuating plague; woodsmoke, the raucous howls of Tatars. Autumn rips away leaves, names, fruit, it covers the borders and paths, extinguishes lamps and tapers; young autumn, lips purpled, embraces mortal creatures, stealing their existence. Sap flows, sacrificed blood, wine, oil, wild rivers, yellow rivers swollen with corpses, the curse flowing on: mud, lava, avalanche, gush. Breathless autumn, racing, blue knives glinting in her glance. She scythes names like herbs with her keen sickle, merciless in her blaze and her breath. Anonymous letter, terror, Red Army. Hail the hand that scattered space with stars,
Wrapped whirling world in bright blue blanket, air, Made worlds within worlds, elements in earth, Souls within skins, every one a teeming universe, Every tree a system of semantics, and pushed Beyond probability to place consciousness On this cooling crust of burning rock. Oh praise that hand, mind, heart, soul, power or force That so inclosed, separated, limited planets, trees, humans Yet breaks all bounds and borders To lavish on us light, love, life This trembling glory. Dear First Born:
I’ve always loved you best because you were our first miracle. You were the genesis of a marriage and the fulfillment of young love. You sustained us through the hamburger years, the first apartment, our first mode of transportation (1955 Feet), and the seven-inch TV we paid on for 36 months. You were new, had unused grandparents, and enough clothes for a set of triplets. You were the original model for a mom and dad who were trying to work the bugs out. You got the strained lamb, the open safety pins and three-hour naps. You were the beginning! Dear Middle Born: I’ve always loved you the best because you drew a tough spot in the family and it made you stronger for it. You cried less, had more patience, wore faded hand-me-downs, and never in your life did anything first. But it only made you more special. You were the one we relaxed with, who helped us realize a dog could kiss you and you wouldn’t get sick. You could cross a street by yourself long before you were old enough to get married. And you helped us understand the world wouldn’t collapse if you went to bed with dirty feet. You were the child of our busy, ambitious years. Without you, we never could have survived the job changes and the tedium and routineness that is marriage. To My Baby: I’ve always loved you best because while endings are generally sad, you are such a joy!! You readily accepted the mild-stained bibs, the lower bunk, the cracked baseball bat, the baby book that had nothing written in it except a recipe for graham-cracker piecrust that someone had jammed between the pages. You are the one we held on to so tightly. You darken our hair, quicken our steps, square our shoulders, restore our vision, and give us a sense of humor that security, maturity, and durability can’t provide. When you hairline takes on the shape of Lake Erie and your own children tower over you, you will still be our baby!!! Poised upside down on its duncecap,
a shrunken purple head, True Blueberry, enters its tightening frame of orange lip, and the cream of a child’s cheek is daubed with Zanzibar Cocoa, while Here at the Martha Washington Ice Cream Store we outdo the Symbolistes. a fine green trickle-- Pistachio? Mint Julep? Words have colors, and colors are tasty. sweetens his chin. In front of me Licorice teeters like a lump of coal on its pinkish base of Pumpkin. A Rauschenberg tongue fondles this rich donnée, then begins to erase it. Turning from all that is present in the flesh, so to speak, let the eye wander off to a menu, where it can start to ingest “Quite Sour Lemon sherbet topped with a stem cherry and chocolate sprinkles Swilling in language, all floating in bubbly cherry phosphate the bloated imagination is urged to open still wider and shovel it in, and served with a twist of pretzel.” In this world “Creamy Vanilla and Smooth Swiss Chocolate ice creams” can be “blended with chopped pineapple, dark fudge sauce, ripe bananas, whipped topping, cookies, roasted nutmeats and nippy chopped cherries.” the Unconscious, that old hog, being in charge here of the creative act. At about the moment my tastebuds receive a last tickle of Gingersnap and begin to respond to Orange Fudge, I look at you who have bought my ice cream cones for twenty years, Moving another new ice to the mouth we needn’t remember and look away it is always the same mouth that melts it. My mind assembles a ribald tower of sherbet dips, all on one cone, Apricot, Apple, Tangerine, Peach, Prune, Lime, and then it topples. You are steadier than I. You order one dip always, or, in a dish, two dips of the same flavor. In this hysterical brilliance of neon Come on, consumers, we’ve got to keep scooping it is twelve or fifteen of us to thirty ice creams. so that the creams shall not rise like cold lava out of their bins, numbing our feet, our knees, freezing our chests, our chins, our eyes, Open the door, quick, and let in two handholding adolescents. Coping with all those glands makes them good and hungry. so that, flying out of their cannisters, the chopped nuts shall not top off our Technicolor grave with their oily ashes. Listen! All around us toothsome cones are suffering demolition down to the last, nipple-like tip. How do we know where to stop? Perhaps the glasses and dishes are moulded of candy, and the counters and windows… Over your half-eaten serving of Italian Delight, why are you looking at me the way you are looking at me? In Honor of the Fourth of July 2013/5773: "Learning to Love America" by Shirley Geok-Lin Lim7/5/2013 because it has no pure products
because the Pacific Ocean sweeps along the coastline because the water of the ocean is cold and because land is better than ocean because I say we rather than they because I live in California I have eaten fresh artichokes and jacaranda bloom in April and May because my senses have caught up with my body my breath with the air it swallows my hunger with my mouth because I walk barefoot in my house because I have nursed my son at my breast because he is a strong American boy because I have seen his eyes redden when he is asked who he is because he answers I don’t know because to have a son is to have a country because my son will bury me here because countries are in our blood and we bleed them because it is late and too late to change my mind because it is time. To pull the metal splinter from my palm
my father recited a story in a low voice. I watched his lovely face and not the blade. Before the story ended, he’d removed the iron sliver I thought I’d die from. I can’t remember the tale, but hear his voice still, a well of dark water, a prayer. And I recall his hands, two measures of tenderness he laid against my face, the flames of discipline he raised above my head. Had you entered that afternoon you would have thought you saw a man planting something in a boy’s palm, a silver tear, a tiny flame. Had you followed that boy you would have arrived here, where I bend over my wife’s right hand. Look how I shave her thumbnail down so carefully she feels no pain. Watch as I lift the splinter out. I was seven when my father took my hand like this, and I did not hold that shard between my fingers and think, Metal that will bury me, christen it Little Assassin, Ore Going Deep for My Heart. And I did not lift up my wound and cry, Death visited here! I did what a child does when he’s given something to keep. I kissed my father. After the fire, where next to turn?
Not the old words, aged with bitterness or despair. Not habitual angers and griefs. Not just a reflection of anyone’s new ideas. But what’s right here: wind rising through a tower of cottonwood. Cicadas motoring their 17 year song. Golden moon half revealed by the silver of the passing cloud. Good things, bad things happen. News dissolves our vision of the world. Not say what’s lost doesn’t make us ache or strip our days of reds so vibrant we forget what we were thinking. But whatever is lost also brings us to this window composed of the lush darkness, the rush of wind or rain through the leaves, the sudden chill dissolving the hot anger or anguish, the pain of the questions that, left unanswered, might divide us. The music of the old house outlives the house. We will make new murals out of the ruins, mosaics from all that’s broken, stone soup at the center of our next feast. Nothing in this world vanishes. Even ghosts, loved enough, turn into angels. The dark shows us what calls not at the edge of what we sense but from the center of where we live. Nothing can take away the power of the real. It is easily forgotten, year to
year, exactly where the plot is, though the place is entirely familiar-- a willow tree by a curving roadway sweeping black asphalt with tender leaves; damp grass strewn with flower boxes, canvas chairs, darkskinned old ladies circling in draped black crepe family stones, fingers cramped red at the knuckles, discolored nails, fresh soil for new plants, old rosaries; such fingers kneading the damp earth gently down on new roots, black humus caught in grey hair brushed back, and the single waterfaucet, birdlike upon its grey pipe stem, a stream opening at its foot. We know the stories that are told, by starts and stops, by bent men at strange joy regarding the precise enactments of their own gesturing. And among the women there will be a naming of families, a counting off, an ordering. The morning may be brilliant; the season is one of brilliances—sunlight through the fountained willow behind us, its splayed shadow spreading westward, our shadows westward, irregular across damp grass, the close-set stones. It may be that since our walk there is faltering, moving in careful steps around snow-on-the-mountain, bluebells and zebragrass toward that place between the willow and the waterfaucet, the way is lost, that we have no practiced step there, and walking, our own sway and balance, fails us. When you were pregnant with Israel, Lord
- did your ankles swell? - did your fingers tingle and droop? Did you spend your time waiting, marking time, and doing infinite chores? After you announced the birth of the nation knowing it would be long, three generations long, till the birth of the people on its land - After you announced the birth, Lord - did you sit counting the days and the years? Did you plan on how you would raise Ephraim, your darling child? how you would call him from Egypt, draw him with cords of love? Did you count the days till you could teach him to walk? till you could bend down and feed him each morsel? When you carried Israel in your womb, O Lord, did you think how you would nurture forever. how you would carry him till old-age? Did you plan every moment of his upbringing, dreaming of the perfect child? Or were you very busy, Lord, planning universes, setting up laws, organizing history? | When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses, for art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstones of our judgment.
President John F. Kennedy * * * Each week, I share a piece of poetry during our Shabbat services. If you're not able to worship with us in person, you can find the poetry selections posted here. ArchivesSeptember 2013 |
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