Jamail Center for Legal Research
Tarlton Law Library

Lights

For eight days each December
they call out to me as the flame
of the candles flickers out,
Remember me they say in unison,
remember me, in the voice of the child,
an old woman, in Yiddish,
in Polish, German, Czech, Latt.
I want to remember but I cannot see
a face reduced to ash, blended
into the earth of a farm field outside Treblinka.
the winter wheat remembers.
I want to remember but I cannot stroke
The head of a young man whose bones
mingle with his brother's, countless others
sharing a mass grave, his skull
and brains painting the trunks
of a nearby stand of trees.
I want to remember, but cannot hear
the sweet tenor of the cantor,
whose tongue was torn from his mouth
for refusing to speak of the tunnels
beneath his once beloved Warsaw.
I want to remember the lavender scent
of the young woman, fresh from the showers
but there is only the stench
of putrid flesh and Zyklon,
of bodies crammed into the converted boxcar.
I want to remember the taste
of a warm challah on Shabbat eve
that she lovingly shaped
into a braid and pulled from the oven,
but her arms were neatly removed
by the surgeon before she
was cast naked into the Polish winter.

I want to remember them all,
capture their names in a memorial
but they are only numbers
tattooed onto endless arms.
The candles die and their voices
fall silent for yet another year.

Almost Passover    

It is almost Pesach, early this year 
so I will get a birthday cake- 
not the rubbery sponge cake 
of matzoh meal, eggs and 
ginger ale, covered in fruit. 
We are peeling the apples 
and chopping them for 
the charoset for the communal seder, 
most to be thrown away 
along with the paper plates 
and chicken bones, and shards 
of matzoh, dry as the winds 
of the desert, the memory 
we drag out each year 
as the last snow fades slowly 
from the streets and trees. 
My friend enters the church, 
as he does each holy week, 
and stops at each station 
of the cross, imagining 
what it must have been like 
to carry the great cross up 
the hill, knowing that atop 
the centurions stood with spikes 
in hand waiting to pierce his wrists 
and ankles, ready to watch him 
droop against the wood as 
the heat licked between his toes. 
I imagine what it was like 
pushing the stones up the ramp 
the taste of sand and the whip 
burning my tongue. 
In ten days we can again 
eat sweet and sour pork 
and shrimp in lobster sauce 
and wait another year 
for the bits of horseradish, 
while he will imagine the fires 
of hell as he slips the five 
into the waistband of her G-string. 

Ode to the Gods

You, who have walked here
through the ages,
who have watched
a million suns swallowed
by untiring waves,
what is it you expect?
There is nothing here for you:
the spirits of the old ones
have long since fled
our sharpened blades,
retreated with the stars
into the hills
that rise from forest.
The animals will come
to you no more,
for we have served them up
as a sacrifice to our hunger.
Your gods are a paltry lot.
They fear our altars
which we have hewn
from your once holy shrines.
We have taken your names,
you are no longer,
and we drag our God
from within the mountain
to shine in the morning sun. 

Missing Persons
 
I enter the station house
and walk up to the neck high desk.
I would like to report 
a missing person.
I have been gone
more than twenty-four hours.
I can't give
a very good description,
my eyes see in the mirror
a still young man
sitting in a park in Salt Lake City
in the drum circle
passing the joint and jug of wine;
my ears hear a voice
deep and rich, reverberating
through the microphone
preaching subversion
to the youth of Rochester;
my fingers touch the cheeks
of the girl perched next to me
on the outcropping overlooking
the middle falls down from the inn,
the sun dancing 
off her long brown hair;
my nose smells the sour odor
of JP-4 Jet Fuel
and the exhaust of the F-102
and the beer soaking the floor
of the base NCO Club
late in the evening.
I can taste the salt
of the sweat in the hollow 
of her neck as we lay
in a moment of reflection
amid the day of passion 
as the Bahamian sun
beats down outside our window.
Sergeant if you find me
please call me immediately
for I am terribly concerned
at my absence, it is
so out of character.

An Off Year
 
The was a winter, once
where even in the north
the snow refused to fall
and ice rejected jamming the culverts,
the sky stared down in amazement.
That was the year trees would not bud
and flowers fled deeper 
into the sweetness of the earth,
grass sighed and lay indolent.
It was a year my coat of many colors
was taken, pieced out among brothers
until each had a color and none a coat.
I would sit at the right hand of kings,
dreaming of a day when dreams
might refuse to visit and then, starved of images,
I could reinforce foundations
preparing for their visit.
I am strapped to the altar
and the knife is poised in the hand
of a man who would like to be a father,
both of us looking up for intervention.
There was a year, once
when the ram broke free
of the thicket and picked his way
down the hill to his young.
 

Adirondack Evening
 
Atop the hill
the trees are filigree
against the fading light.
The tents are fireflies
twinkling as night
reclaims the earth.
I am caught up
in the chill
watching my breath
kiss the stars.

Akeda
 
My father
never walked me
up a hill,
never asked
two servants
to wait below,
never bid me
be strong,
never asked me
to have faith
in the Lord,
never raised
the blade
only to see a ram
in a thicket.

My father 
never did
any of these things
and so I have
no special birthright
to pass to my sons
for God
has moved on
to more 
important matters.
 

Holy Army
 
A millennium ago
the army of the lord
dressed in mail and rode
proud steeds across
barren lands, swords
flashing in a red roasting sun,
washed in the blood
of the infidels.
They stopped for prayer,
blessing the bodies
left along the dirt track
left by their hooves,
a common grave
for common faces
differing only in the color
of skin and hair.
 
In this millennium
the army of the lord
slouches outside the mall
rubbing hands against 
the chill, the bell bleating
against the night,
a barren moon reflects
off the red kettle.
As they locked the doors
he pulled the flask
from his hip pocket
and thought of the bodies
passing by, swerving
to avoid him, and the
forty dollars he would get
would warm 
his frozen skin.

Yiddish
 
My grandmother lapsed 
into Yiddish only on special occasions,
"where other words won't fit"
she said, where there is 
no English to describe 
the indescribable, blessed
be He, but we knew
that it was merely 
a convenient way to keep 
us out of the conversation,
while they clucked.
Mah Johng is a game
that can only be played
in Yiddish, she said,
to hell with thousands 
of years of Chinese history.
 
She remembers the Golem-
she met him once 
on Fourteenth Street
when she still had
the liquor store. 
She thought it strange
that he wanted gin
and not Slivovitz,
but Golem can be strange
under the right circumstances,
and he did speak Yiddish.
 
[446]

Unto Tarshish

In this place
there is a fatted,
sacrificial silence.
It is the large
Jewish Cemetery
nestling the road
where Maryland
and the District are loosely
stitched together.
It is a small plot,
goldenrod dirt
outskirting Lisbon.
 
This ground is sacred
not for the blessing
of one who
has taken the tallit
of holiness.
The sanctity of this
ground leaches 
from the plain pine
boxes that return
with the body
     to the soil.
 
The stones, mostly simple
with neatly incised 
Hebrew inscriptions
are all blank
to me, worn
smooth by memory
denied.  
     I place my ear
carefully to each, wanting
to hear a voice,
a fractured whisper
that will resonate
in the hollow spaces.
 
I pass by those 
with shared names
for if he or she is here

each must share 
the isolation
they willed me.  
I look
at the faces 
of passing mourners- 
none resemble
the morning mirror.
 
I grow tired 
of the search, sit
in the paltry shade
of the ricinus plant,
knowing we both will 
be gone by sundown.

Louis Faber is a Rochester, New York corporate lawyer specializing in intellectual property licensing. He received his MBA from Florida International University, his J.D. from S.U.N.Y.-Buffalo, and his M.F.A. from Goddard College. He is currently on the adjunct faculty in the Department of English/Philosophy at Monroe Community College. His poetry and photography have been published in various journals, on and off the web.
"Lights" was first published in Rattle, "Almost Passover" first appeared in Kimera, "Ode to the Gods" in 12 Gauge, "Missing Persons" in The Worchester Review, "An Off Year" in Arnazella, "Adirondack Evening," in Blueline, "Akeda," in European Judaism, "Holy Army" in Lullwater Review, "Yiddish" in Midstream.