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Because of Her
Because of her
there were weddings
births
bar mitzvahs
then more marriages
more births
more bar mitzvahs
and then again and again
unto a fourth generation
Multiplied by babies
how many lives were saved
from gas and smoke
bullets and ash?
from the hundred and more
arithmetic tells me well
into a thousand or so
yes when millions
of lights are doused
so swift so fast
‘or so’ becomes a number
an exact figure
I would count them if I could
but they are scattered over
continents and even she
did not know could not
recall the names of all
but many remembered and
through the years mystery
letters arrived – invitations
to bris’
bar mitzvahs
weddings
she’d go to solve the riddle
find herself singled out amidst
strangers – the ‘guest of honor’
music would stop
lights would dim
except for one on her
There’d be the toast before all others
‘If not for her…because of her….
this day has come
this simcha
this day for joy and life’
‘Because of her…hinenu – we are here’
and so it would go
that on that day
she’d learn the name of
another one she had saved
Waiting
(of my parents Henry and Eta)
Did you wait for each other
in some constellation
neither was aware of
at a time when seeing stars
was illegal impossible
all eyes on the mud
and dust
and ash
and blood
when to gaze upward
was to lose sight of the
one foot in front of the other
the pits and the quicksand
everywhere on any front
and side and back
And in that far constellation
as planets rotated
on axes in despair
as tens of millions were
sucked into vacuums
did you two shoot like
stars across light years
as wide as galaxies
as close as two sides
of a small town’s tracks?
You found a fate made of war
the only order out of chaos
the only glimmer in oblivion
You didn’t then know that
you waited each for the other
when there was no one else
left to wait for
Hearing Something New
My father is a completely poetic
creature at this point and I feel
almost mercenary using him
to stoke my pen to words
We break for lunch
not a meal goes by without
surprise and revelation
He was there in summer of ’44
at the liberation of Majdanek
where 895,000 went to gas and dust
nothing else ever happened there
He asked his captain about
the mountains of tiny shoes
next to hills of eyeglasses
Hearing Something New – Continued
The Russian officer replied –
first tears in a year – ‘Genady *
these are your Jewish children’
Dad sips his tea
coughs from a bite
of corn muffin and
wipes his eyes under a pair
of spectacles that got away
* Henry’s name in Russian
The Crib
To the leftovers of war
in slums of Brooklyn born
my crib – a shell without legs
among garbage cans and rats
he took it back to the one
room for five behind the tiny
grocery on grease grimy streets
she scrubbed until it shined
and readied up the bed for
my small body brought here
near death in kidney pain
they asked him who to save
she was so sick – her or me
he had two babies at home stolen
from the grave by what seemed days
save my wife – said he
but we both came home
a Chicago surgeon’s mitzvah
before his heartland return
she placed me to sleep
in the dump-found crib
agleam in sunshine alight
four milk crates of wood
he’d set down to hold me
The day
it was diurnal
it was everyday
what cannot be conveyed
in a two hour film
it was diurnal
it was everyday
and cannot be portrayed
in the pages of a book
wake in woods
wash in puddles and brooks
heat or ice
the same each day
one dress clean or not
boots barely ever unshod
even in the heat of July
braid the hair
do the clasp on a cross
tuck papers that say you
were sprayed with holy water
when just a babe
and so into this day
The day – Continued
this dangerous day
this deadly desolate day
one foot
one foot only
ahead of the man
the super man
the police man
for only today
one foot ahead
any moment
many feet in the ground
as pits give birth to pits in
every wood and edge of field
so this is your day and
the sun barely up
how many days in a year?
how many hours in a day?
how many minutes in an hour?
how many seconds in a minute?
and each second afraid
so near to death
so covered in death
so smothered by death
every landscape a cemetery
so your business day begins
pretending hard
knocking on doors
procuring food medicine
selling what is possible
to buy a few guns from
farmers who may know
where some are to be found
Jews needing to be hidden
ears always alert
eyes like a hawk
nerves electric
hands steady
there is no lunch break
no sick leave
no week-ends off
it could be shabbat
and you have to burn that
Jew denouncer’s barn down
anyway – or worse
no benefits come with
this line of work
if night comes for you
sleep will fall like hail
burying the burn of day
and if no one comes upon
your wooded nest in the dark
with pitchforks and shovels
there may be another morning
diurnal
every day
that is lived
