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The rain cleaned off the steep facade of houses;
I write upon the white and stony sheet
And feel how my tired hand so softly rouses
From love poems that always, sweetly, were a cheat.
I wake in the…
Lord, I want to return to your word,
Lord, I want to pour out my wine,
Lord, I want to go, to go to you,
Lord, I do not know what should be done,
I am alone.
I am alone in empty air,
In terror of…
To be or not to be—that’s not the question.
Sense or nonsense—that’s my obsession.
For too long, Divine reckoning
has shredded human thinking.
The sum total of justice is a round number:
bright…
I inherited naive open-heartedness
From generations of small-town Polish Jews,
And sharp talk
From hot-bathed women in my clan.
A blind June-night mixed it all
And sent me out—
With no…
My grandfather’s kinsman, a Jew who tamed bears,
Performed in the market towns;
By day his beast was confined in chains;
At night, they danced under the stars.
Nicknamed “Ten Commandments,” the man…
A Gift to Hofshteyn
Pass on, pass on, you lonely grandfathers,
With frightened beards covered with snow,
In the last sorrow, in the final grief
You’re still here, the final witnesses.
Pass on, pass on, you lonely…
Abishag. Little, young, warm Abishag.
Shout into the street: King David is not yet dead.
But King David wants to sleep and they won’t let him.
Adoniyahu with his gang shout my crown off my gray head…
Aged woolen women, like old siddurim—moldy, mossy
Bound in coarse canvas;
Pointless bellies dangling after them like empty sacks,
Dried-out breasts, like horseradish roots, swaying back and forth.…
All of us—dying here in polar, ice-cold indifference of nations, forgotten by the world and its hustle and bustle—have nonetheless felt the need to leave something for posterity: if not complete…