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The Legal Studies Forum
Volume 30, Number 1/2 (2006) reprinted by permission Legal Studies Forum Lawyers & Poets A World Ever So Mad LOU FABER _______________________ Elegy for a Poet - for Allen Ginsburg You died quietly in your bed friends gathered around the cars and buses of the city clattering out a Kaddish to a God you had long ago dismissed as irrelevant. We would have expected you to howl, to decry the unfairness of it all, but you merely said it is time, and slipped away. Who gave you the right to depart without leaving us one last remonstration against the insanity that surrounds us, one last censure of the fools who we have so blindly chosen to lead a generation into a hell of our creation. You had your peace but what of us left behind, what can we look forward to in your absence save the words we know so well, can recite by heart that no longer beats in your breast. [501]
Another Ghetto She sits in the bookstore café her head covered by a linen kerchief bobby pinned to the mass of walnut curls. She cradles the cup of cooling coffee and stares down at the slim book of Amichai, yielding to the Hebrew letters that seem to dance across the page. I sit at the adjoining table with my used copy of Bialik, translated. I glance at her "I'll miss him" with a nod to Amichai then "Where are you from?" She shifts in her seat, legs crossing, pulling back staring over my shoulder at the slowly spinning fan, then at the book. I look for her eyes but they dance away, my hands clasp and unclasp, fingers drum on the table. She mutters, "Atlanta." "What part?" "Warsaw, inside the walls and wire, that place from which so few of us ever manage to escape." [502]
Auschwitz II when you lined us up neatly in order as per the selection and led us to the "shower" we knew we would never have to wait our feet freezing for another count we would be checked off your roster logged and counted when we heard the first hiss from the showerheads we knew we would be finally cleansed and we poured out our lungs onto the whitewashed walls when the young boys piled us onto the cart we lay perfectly still so as not to shift making their work that much harder when they dragged us into the ovens we licked at the flames as they shrouded us quickly consumed a paltry meal for the inferno always demanding more when our ashes rose into a crystal blue sky we stared down floating over the starved fields we settled slowly into the soil knowing we would yield a thousand bitter harvests when you visit us your tears bathe us and we are cleansed while they rub themselves raw and crawl into the freshly dug pits marked by simple stones worn [503]
we devour them and they cry out Why? [504]
Curfew We sat in the cramped kitchen huddled around the stove the open oven door spreading a faint warmth that barely slid through the winter chill. The bare bulb in the ceiling strained and flickered, fighting to hold, as the generators were shut down, and darkness enveloped our small world. The sky was lit by the flares and the odor of exploding shells seeped through the towel sealed windows covered in the tattered bedsheets too thin to afford warmth. Ibrahim had been gone two weeks sneaking out of the city to join his brothers in Gorazde or Tuzla, or wherever it was that they were struggling to save what little was left. We huddled under the small table and dreamed of the taste of fresh bread, or even pork. In the morning we would run among the craters in the streets in search of the convoy and the handouts, which we would raven as the sun set over our war torn hell. [505]
Enslaved We were six hours out of Tokyo somewhere over the North Pacific. My back was cramped, calf muscles knotted, longing for sleep that would not come, the movie rolling out in sullen silence. I wait for the night to pass, for light to break in through the cracks around the pulled shades, some small reminder that day and freedom await, but the sun remains outside, knowing its place. We wandered the desert for 40 years but there we had freedom of movement, endless space in the parching sun. Sitting on the plane, quietly begging for a landing and the crush of bodies moving through the airport, you long to see her pull off the shirt and jeans, to see her standing, stretching in the pink panties, to mix lust and love and sweat, to hold her in the frantic dance of orgasm, but none of that is possible from seat 34 C United Flight 882 en route to Chicago. We stood in the cattle cars, pressed so tightly that movement occurred only in waves, surprised that they would treat laborers in such a fashion, but dreading the alternative, it offered constant provision of your papers to the smug young men who knew so little of the world, save for the gray wool of the uniforms, the twin lightning bolts screwed into their lapels, their cruelty not only expected but ordered. When we saw the smoke rising from the ovens we knew, but preferred to deny the truth as surely as the cordwood knows that it is destined for the fire, soon to be ashes. She is likely waking now, stepping from the shower her skin lightly red from the back scrubber [506]
and the towel rubbed across her thighs. We stood on the deck of the old freighter, many of us pressed tightly against the rail and saw the old seaport baking in the sun, a land we were certain was promised us but they turned us back though several drowned swimming for her shores, death preferable to return to a place of nothingness, a void. Six hours out of Tokyo, teeming with people like the lower East Side on Shabbat morning, you want to see open spaces, to find some sort of freedom and our slavery is barely a bitter memory, saved for prayer. [507]
Dust and Ashes Between Scylla and Charybdis they cower amidst the ruins fearful to look skyward lest they encourage the rains of hell. Now and then they visit the corpses, hastily buried grief drowned by the sound of the laugh of the gunner peering down from the hills. It is always night for the soul and lookout must be kept for Charon, who rides silently along the rivers of blood, that flow through her streets. In the great halls, far removed from the horror, self professed wise men exchange maps lines randomly drawn, scythes slicing a people. They trade in lives as chattel, reaping a bitter harvest, praying there may only be but seven lean years. They offer a sop to Cerberus, three villages straddling the river, but the army of the hills knows it will take that and more and waits patiently for the winter when the odor of sanctity no longer arises out of the city to assail their nostrils and Shadrach is no more than a ghost. [508]
Hanging by a Thread In Riga, my grandfather was a master tailor, the great and the rich would come to his shop some bringing bolts of fine cloth and others trusting him knowing that wools and silks were not beyond his reach. Even after they marked his home as that of the Jew, the Captain, who rode through the city with his men torches thrown through windows would come to him, late in the night, seeking a new dress uniform. Eventually they took his needles threw his spools of thread into the river, he could stand no more and with the few kopecks that remained he left for New York where, he thought, even a poor tailor could walk on golden streets and create garments the likes of which a Tsar could only imagine. Each morning he would arise and strap on the scarred phylacteries to recite his morning prayers then go out into the cold in his threadbare coat to the factories and couture houses only to return before noon to a bowl of bread soup awaiting the visit of one of the men or women in his tenement who would ask him to sew a new patch into a worn jacket, a fraying dress, all for a few pennies begrudgingly spared. [509]
He was, he said, the new Moses free of bondage, told that milk and honey would be his portion wandering the desert of this new land, free at last of the bonds that had enslaved him, plucking the bitter manna from among the sands but free, he would shout, to starve on the cliffs overlooking the land promised to him. [510]
Israel's Justification for the Bomb Once it was fur hats men on horseback swords and torches our villages casting a faint glow falling into dying embers, here, one whose skull bears the mark of the hoof, there an old one who would go no farther. Once it was a helmet tanks for horses flames contained in crematoria cities taken for the deserving- we, merely ashes shoveled into a pit, here a tooth, its gold torn free and cataloged first the old ones who could go no farther. And so we have learned, we in our kippot we in our planes and if you do not hear, we will give you the holy fires of God you and your villages a faint shadow and so much vapor, so much ash carried on His holy breath for we have learned well and we have fused these words in our minds, never again. [511]
Map Store The bride walks down the aisle trailing a veil of tears rolling in the dust of too many centuries, encrusting the virgin. Albert Einstein purchases a map of Taos. Bookkeeper hunches over ledger sheets tallying night winds across the frozen pond, log wedged in the ice. Douglas Macarthur purchases a map of Hue. Monitors blare news from other worlds, flickering across cups of half empty coffee and cigarette butts and muscatel dreams. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern purchase a map of Sarajevo. [512]
Metastasis She could barely move her head the cancer climbed her spine reaching upward, clutching vertebrae reaching out, tendrils grasping tearing fragile organs. She would cry, but that would be an admission of defeat, a welcome to death. I cried out for her, entreated our God for compassion that she might stand by her sons when they uttered the ancient words, by her daughter, adjusting the white lace veil, but he would not answer, drawn into catatonia, seeing severed limbs of children littering the streets of Sarajevo. She clings tenuously to life as I cling tenuously to faith. [513]
On the Tenth Plague Mark your doorpost with the blood of the lamb for this may be the night when God's emissary arrives for the killing of the first born. Will he be a night bird half raven, half vulture or an aged man concealing his weapon in shabby robes. Mark your doorpost and check it often for if your neighbor wipes the blood away, you will be visited and no amount of pleading will deter him from his task, there are no interim plagues remaining to buy you time, if he chooses to come tonight. Put your ear against the window and listen for him, will he come on cat's paws or the rasp of lungs slowly drowning, will coins jangle in his pocket, to pay your fare to the ferryman to cross the river. But if you do not believe, perhaps he will forget to come. [514]
Small Reflection It is that moment when the moon is a glaring crescent, slowly engulfed by the impending night- when the few clouds give out their fading glow in the jaundiced light of the sodium arc street lamp. It nestles the curb-at first a small bird- when touched, a twisted piece of root. I want to walk into the weed strewn aging cemetery, stand in the shadow of the expressway, peel the uncut grass from around her head stone. I remember her arthritic hands clutching mine, in her dark, morgueish apartment, smelling of vinyl camphor borsht. I saw her last in a hospital bed where they catalog and store those awaiting death, stared at the well tubed skeleton barely indenting starched white sheets. She smiled wanly and whispershouted my name-I held my ground unable to cross the river of years unwilling to touch her outstretched hand. She had no face then, no face now, only an even fainter smell of age of camphor of lilac of must Next to the polished headstone lies a small, twisted root. I wish it were a bird, I could place gently on the lowest branch of the old maple that oversees her slow departure. [515]
Speaking in Tongues She said you should try astral projection I said I have tried transcendental meditation and even a bit of EST She said that biofeedback was better than most of the drugs she remembered using I said that tequila took far less practice if you could stand the inevitable hangover She said she thought that dying was something like giving birth I said that it was more like an orgasm that would last an eternity She said your coffin would have a weird projection I said that hers would have to be surprisingly wide [516]
Trickster Coyote is always out there waiting, and Coyote is always hungry. - Navajo saying Dusk cedes slowly into violet night. A crow flies across a near full moon. Coyote comes down from the foothills wearing masks. I met her in a letter. Jewish Family Services wrote in response to my request. "We are barred by law from giving you identify¬ing information concerning your birth parents." Buried within the third paragraph was this: "Sixteen months after your adop¬tion, your parents adopted a baby girl, Lisa." She was formless, this sister. My adoption was an accepted fact, predating memory. She was to be my sister, a baby who would grow into my reflection. But she came and left in half a line of a letter, a quickly fading echo. Sitting in the cramped office, the caseworker, hair backlit through the window, the gray blue of a half clouded summer sky, rested wattled arms on a stack of files. "About your sister I know almost nothing. Your father died when she was four months. We had no choice but to take her back. We placed her immediately with a new family and lost touch." I am a watcher of name tags. I search for Lisas, estimate ages. I have no pictures. Mother burned them when they took Lisa away. I still recall the smell when she threw the baby blanket into the fireplace. I remember now how the smoke choked the room. We fled the house. She never mentioned Lisa. Coyote is two fiery gems across the mesa. Coyote wears the mask of a caseworker. Coyote comes down from the foothills and steals a small child. Coyote's bray is mocking. [517]
Vladimir Krevchinsky froze his ass off on the Siberian plain. The gray concrete box was traded for concrete gray skies, the whistle of the truncheon gives way to winter's blasts. It was in many ways easier when the beatings came neatly marking the days, dividing days between pain and exhaustion, all under the watchful eye of the meek incandescent sun dangling from the ceiling. In the camp day and night are reflections of an unseen clock, seasons slide from discontent to depression. The prison of the body is finite built block on block, the prison of the soul is vast, empty, dissipating life. [518]
What Did You Do When they asked him what did you do during the war he said "I just stood guard." When they asked him where he said "a station, just a station, like most others, I just stood guard." When they asked him did you see the trains carrying the bodies crammed into cattle cars he said "I saw many trains, it was just a station, but mostly I looked at the sky, wishing for the sun, but mostly it was gray and there was smoke from the chimneys." When they asked him why did you wear the lightening bolts he said "I was a ski instructor but I broke my leg so I stood at the station, just a station like most others." When they asked him did he know of the ovens he said "They made bread which we ate each night when there were no potatoes." When they asked him about the Jews he said "I knew no Jews there were none in the town where I stood guard at a station, just a station like most others." When they asked him what he did after the war he said "I prayed, just prayed for my sins, sins like those of so many others." [519]
Piano Lessons Mrs. Schwarting was my piano teacher. At twelve, my parents gave me a choice of piano or dance. I had two left feet. I chose piano, it did not move. My mother smiled at my choice, she knew what my decision would be before she asked. Mrs. Schwarting was my piano teacher. Each Wednesday at 4 P.M. mother would drop me off in the driveway of the cottage like house, buried in the cul de sac. I would wait on the ivy covered portico until the prior student would leave. You never knocked on Mrs. Schwarting's door. No one ever came in with you. Piano was something you learned alone. Mrs. Schwarting was my piano teacher. Her hair was the gray of a Buffalo winter, a sky promising snow. Her hair was the blue of a sky bleached by the August sun. Her hair was stiff, frozen by hair spray. Each Wednesday I would take off my coat and hang it on the single hook by the door. Just one hook, she said, just one student. Mrs. Schwarting was my piano teacher. Her first name was Mrs. That's what my mother wrote on the check each week, the check I always put in the little basket on the top of the piano. Once, my mother forgot her checkbook. She gave me cash. When I put it in the basket, Mrs. Schwarting clucked her disapproval, no bills, only checks. Please to vait on porch until your mother arrives. As the door closed behind me, the matter was laid to rest, no bills, only checks. Mrs. Schwarting was my piano teacher. She was five foot one. She would stand behind me, keep spine straight, zat is how you must play, her head hovering on my shoulder like a pet bird. She smelled of lavender, her breath of slivovitz. She was German. Her house was German. Her English was German. Her piano must have been German. It loved Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, tolerated Mozart but despised Satie. It is your fingers, the piano cares not. The piano cared. Mrs. Schwarting was my piano teacher. Czerny was her mentor, she said. You vill play each piece at least fife times each day. Every day, fife times. You vill write down each day [520]
how many times you play each piece. Each day I sat at the piano in the living room. Each day I played each piece five times. When the sun was out, the only tempo was presto. I always played fortissimo, mother listened. Mother counted. Mrs. Schwarting was my piano teacher. Each May she would hire a hall for a recital. We would sit in just so order, not to move, not to speak, just to sit. You vill never look to your hands. Zay are at ze end of your arms, I am certain. You vill play slowly. If you play fastly, you vill play again. For Mrs. Schwarting, there was no "w," "th" was a foreign tongue. Mrs. Schwarting was German. Her house was German, her piano was German. Her fingers which always tapped my shoulder to set the tempo, her fingers were German. I told my mother she was a Nazi. My mother laughed, she's just German. Then why no first name? Maybe she was Eichmann's secret lover. My sister took lessons from Mrs. Schwarting. She thought Mrs. Schwarting's piano was German. My sister could reach a full octave easily, I had a span of a seventh. In my last recital I played Für Elise. I played it badly. Mrs. Schwarting was my piano teacher. In the lobby of the Osaka Hyatt Hotel there is a piano. At three in the morning I wander the lobby. The desk clerk smiles. I sit at the piano. My back is straight. I play the opening ten measures of Für Elise. I still cannot reach an octave. I play it badly. The piano is not German. [521]
Taos, Evening On the mesa between El Prado and Tres Piedras after the sun has been swallowed by the mountains, to the east a fire burns. Countless stars stare down on the shivering sage. The scorpion lunges for the distant hill. The fire grows behind the mountain and slowly the orange disk rises, slowly, as the smallest stars flee Luna's furious light. The jackrabbit stands frozen in the road until her baleful eyes fall on him, and he dives into the sage. In the dead hours, once she has sought her refuge, the clouds are no longer shrouds and the wind fancydances in the canyons. [522]
Baghdad Villanelle We enter, the conquering heroes drive quickly through the city's core, we leave a crude division in our throes. We expected flowers, not blows of an angry mob, to be adored we enter, the conquering heroes. An old man sits in a small café, he knows what will come of this, a festering sore we leave a crude division in our throes that builds, wells up, we depose a tyrant, you're a new tyrant they roar we enter, the conquering heroes. At home, on TV we watch the blows rain down on the prisoners, huddled on the floor we leave a crude division in our throes. We do not see bodies arrive, only rows of new headstones, the President will say no more, we enter, the conquering heroes, we leave a crude division in our throes. [523]
Ghost Writing I am going to write my sister on this page for all of you to see, or that of her which remains; not the parts the doctors have carved away, the brain matter that nestled the tumor, the left breast, now just an angry scar, the once silken black hair replaced by gray brittle straw that collapses at a touch. I won't put her in the giant white tube that clanks in pulses, or ask you to insert the needle into ever fleeting veins. I will ask you to pause over her occasional smile regardless of the prompt, your expense or hers, it matters no more than the moments after your own death. I will write her in pencil more easily erased, so your view will be current. Don't worry she likely won't recognize you, soon, it's okay to stare, and if she does that bit of mind will soon fade, swallowed by the mutant beast that is beyond sating. This is my sister in her vainglory or what is left of her, at the moment. [524]
What, She Asks, Does a Feather Sound Like? echo of Galileo's ball cast off the tower, the cascade of butterfly wings and universes collapsing, the moment before there was time. [525]
Albert and I Time folds in on itself, the arrow bends, grows recursive we lapse slowly backward slipping into a protean state. Our universe is neatly bisected the inner working laid open showing craftsmanship far beyond our meager comprehension, we cling to the surface, fear sliding deep into its depth, spiral freely in infinite progression, slowing approaching, never reaching, the source. We wash up on a beach, are pulled from the earth, dangle from the neck of the sun. [526]
The Good Child I. I was there as she lay in the bed, stroked her freshly shaved head, neatly marked for the scalpel and bone saw. We weren't close for years but our sibling life never required proximity. She lived in anger, I, in hope, but we shared the cancer. I was the fourth stage of the metastasis, they took part of her brain, part of our shared memories, she was always my kid sister. She took their three months and gave me, us all, six years. II. 5 A.M. and I had struggled awake. The phone rang. It might as well have been a midnight call, "Your sister died during the night, your brother and I were here with her when she left-why haven't you answered the phone." Mother, I wanted to say, her name is Jody, and had I answered your first call, I still couldn't have brought her back. I didn't say to her it was you who said we had time, the cancer had waited this long, it would wait a few days longer. If you thought she was close why did you and my brother go to Temple, to pray, to be seen. I didn't say I waited, the dutiful son trying to follow his mother's directions. [527]
III. She lay in the bed enveloped in the faint odor of death, her ashen cheeks gently inflated by steroids, she had a stillness I had never known from her, her last anger soaked into the sheets. My brother paced the room, a caged cat coiled, and I bared my neck better to get it done, "I've been with her since she died" he spat- I knew I couldn't pull him off, "We need to get an autopsy, to keep the lawsuit alive" he hissed. I bled my tears on the linoleum floor, "Let go," I said, "it's done, let go," and his angry shoulder is as cold as her forehead in death. [528]
Lou Faber is a graduate of SUNY at Buffalo Law School. He obtained an MBA from Florida International University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College. He is presently Associate General IP Counsel, Litigation and Licensing for Xerox Corporation where he manages patent litigation and licensing. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the English Department at Monroe Community College where he teaches Introduction to Literature. Faber's poetry has appeared in publications large and small, print and online, in the United States, Canada, Israel and Great Britain. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, The Worchester Review, Borderlands, Exquisite Corpse, South Carolina Review, Pearl, Vigil, and Living Poets and in the anthologies, Torture and Triumph (Scars Publication and Design, 2001), and Kafka Kaleidoscope (Birch Brook Press, 1999)(Martin Wasserman, ed.) "Another Ghetto" first appeared in an on line publication Ariga; "Auschwitz II" in Aura Literary Arts Review; "Curfew" in Kimera; "Elegy for a Poet" and "Dust and Ashes," in Living Poets; "Enslaved" in Paterson Literary Review; "Hanging by a Thread" in Aura Literary Arts Review; "Israel's Justification for the Bomb" in Pearl; "Map Store," "Speaking in Tongues," and "Vladimir" in HazMat Review; "Metastasis" in Community of Poets; "On the Tenth Plague" in Midstream; "Small Reflection" in Rattle; "Trickster" in Yesterday's Laundry: Prose Poems; "What Did You Do" in Vigil. |
