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The Legal Studies Forum
Volume 30, Number 1/2 (2006) reprinted by permission Legal Studies Forum Lawyers & Poets Journeys Close to Home SAUL TOUSTER _____________________________ Green Apple: Still Life IV The core of apple is no sweeter than the seed in the core, which is bitterer still. Lost in the greenness which had come out of the blue and made its way into the apple, the light becomes wine in suspension, growing darker with time. Thus is the apple, flesh and seed, preserved. [257]
Still Life with Porcelain Pitcher A pale blue porcelain pitcher with a crackled glaze stands aloof above three lemons, a green apple, and a speckled brown pear. On a table of light, shadows swarm from the great hive of sweet meats to live out their time under the scant mercy of this imperious queen. [258]
Still Life with Two Pears and Kitchen Knife Un-treed, yanked, cut down before their time, their yellow skin beginning to discolor, two pears that swung like bells in greenery's carillon still ring their pealing hymns through chambered heaven where they will rest forever in a too-small canvas box. Now their drooping stiff stems cast shadows across the knife like black arm-bands worn by next of kin at an interment. Now you are asked to cast a handful of dirt into a freshly dug hole to sound a muffled tattoo, now you are moved by the harvest hymnal, and summoned to your soul's autumnal call. [259]
A Moral Still Life Although he has spent what he's been given and what he's not, and spilling wine over his shirtfront on its journey from cup to lip convulsed us with laughter, there is nothing in all the poems he's written or the curses he travels under to suggest he would— despite the pain in his chest serious enough— for a moment undo a single act he could or could not remember, his memory not being perfect any more than anyone's is, unless it was to do again with a little more of himself it, the act, the night and hang over even from a higher precipice to get his breath again. Now unless we can understand, we who were convulsed with laughter, understand this his unrepentance or rather simply his unwillingness to say "stop" to whatever sends the years racing as they do in spurts leaving great gaps in his lungs, unless we can do this we who were convulsed with [260]
and by him shall never— or put it this way: Is there any reason not to? [261]
The Statue of Liberty Stunned by the immaculate skyline of your throat, my grandfather paused, gathered what strength he had and climbed steerage and thighs into the tourist air. Here at your sea-washed hem he fell under the shadow of your earlobes dazzled by an outrageous chandelier. Gulled of his bare belongings he bathed in the sink after the soup greens, watched the paint peel and smelled in Victorian gas cocks something dangerous. And yet for you, America, the elbows of his black serge shone and the seaweed in his beard his love as if he had discovered you. America! Thief! Give me back my grandfather's eyes! [262]
Kafka's Funeral The mother, who should never have lived to bury a son, could not believe she had become the dead man's child. She wept like a child. The father, who should have given the boy a break by dying first, could not believe this was the letter his son sent. He kept in his mind an early version unbelievably innocent. The betrothed could not believe this was the bridal bed. And the friends who came could not believe it was June when tree follows tree in flower and the frog jumps like the frog. [263]
Memory Of An Irish Housemaid You were young when you came to us right off the boat, and young when you were gone like an actor, a Jew, alive in a way no one could fathom. At least not a child. And yet for thirty years moments of your brogue have flown from my mouth— mostly when I'm drunk. The winters made you sad. I remember that. They were so cold you'd shiver at the thought. No, you wouldn't stir from the house in the "bitter," except for Mass, the church a good twelve blocks away. You went whenever you could. It made your day. Perhaps you ought to know, wherever you are, the house hasn't been cleaned so well in years. The way your chapped hands flew to your hair! Ah! but you are lost in the blue cleanliness of air. [264]
Beside Lake Erie's Frozen Waters Late geese southward dip their chill wings drawing the blue sky of your eyes. A Baltic wind gallops off the lake— white specks from oblivion like the onset of disease. The light just isn't right. No matter how you arrange it the furniture casts incoherent shadows and snow drifts between us like an interpreter. We might do better, you and I. Producing Chekhov to an empty house drifts of starling-silent time bury the world on the tips of our tongue. We hang like icicles from each other's boughs. And then we walk the Gallery. The Matisse aches. Outside, on his pedestal, bronze David hangs on the Italian sun, snow-patched to his genitals. We may as well, you and I, be stripped of illusion like him who fell from the artist's hand and hammer naked and unfeeling. [265]
Four Complaints Complaint against the city's parks A few benches fit all despairs, the mottled grass—passions night could not solve. An anonymous statue holds a sailor drunk with pigeons while time, like a fresh kid, bothers an office girl with vulgar gestures of heaven. There's no horizon. Even the flowers are couched in journalese. Still, like the office girl who burned as bright and lolled in dust as long as any flower, and was stung by the same great bee, I too am touched— as when I hear of orphanage or game preserve or, on a beach, see a gull swoop and come up with a silvery thing in its beak, both flapping. Let's drop the pretense of green ecstasies, and give up altogether this series of exits from Eden. Complaint against the stars A burnt out star catches an eye, draws a finger, changes a ship's course. [266]
For all I know some thick hand broke the needle's point and what I see is shattered glass. Or is it a black cat that holds in its claws a million mice? We must draft some other fiction for night's domestic scheme. For example: not to record the death of stars does time exist, but to spread store of seed. Complaint against the sky Rain is what I am thinking of, and the sound it makes on bare flesh, and the taste. Who needs the tourist sky? the recreation of the clouds? the wind's reprise? —when there's water. I've circled the odd-shaped earth and on my windshield are smeared the wings and innards of Gandhi's ethic. There's not enough rain. Complaint against mystic exercises In bi-lingual cities: ferocious appetites, [267]
unbelievable sunsets, self-abuse. Cattle driven from the night's feeding pens bury the immaculate crest of day in dung. To be elsewhere, to be as far from where you are and as near to where you are not as the skin can stand— sit sightless, chew on the godless air, spit out divine mash. Friends: Will such experiments ever come to anything, I ask you? [268]
The Indwelling Irrevocable love like music moves Beyond itself, beyond recall, And leaves its resting place, the finished shell, Composed within the world. Into my trembling hands, to my ear The smooth eternal conch is held, And there a humming of the seas concealed— Zimzum, zimzum, zimzum . . . . Some spirit slaves in exile in the shell Alone in water-darkness, And prays to be turned to light: A hard manumission. What emanations of captivity Can free us—grave communicants Who stand listening to sounds At the confluence of their years? Love, irrevocable, like music braves The interval of sound, The waves, between surges, at my feet, And the drag of the seas. [269]
Lunch Hour Idyll Budding iris in April— in the shadow of Trinity Church where Wall Street begins among stones and grass and historic prisoners of grass. Sandwiched between the hours the church clock races from graveyard to river, the iris takes its tear-shape time. After a long winter the office girls sun themselves— their coats open, their eyes closed. [270]
Salo's Release to the Press Gentlemen,In response to inquiries I was born in my native city In the year of my birth. My parents, that is, my mother and father, Raised me in the household Of which I was a member. I began My education at school at the age required By the laws of the state in which we lived, And I was thereafter educated In the various schools I attended. My performance at these schools Will, I'm sure, be found in the records Of the department of education Of the districts in question. Upon graduation, I ended my schooling And entered the armed services, Serving in capacities the authorities found me Suited for. I remained for the period these same authorities Determined, at the end of which I was separated from the service. It was at this very time, if I recall, that I re-entered civilian life— These are the confessions of a man Who has, hitherto, lived a secret life. I do not make them lightly, And I understand fully the consequences Of putting them in writing. I make them under no compulsion. This is a free and voluntary act. I place myself entirely in your hands. /signed/ Salo. [271]
Archaic Head It gazes out at us, quite relaxed, the head of one who might have soldiered here and survived the casual butchery of time. Creation's marble must have fixed his stare as the long burial fixed the scars he carried. How he stood and in what fight he fell he almost wants to tell, but then the stoic in him won't permit, he who is as worldly and telling as the resurrected are. [272]
All Birds Are All birds are of paradise. Nature's small economies forego the plumage, pay in song, or size, the price some feature saves. Sparrows are our pennies, from hand to hand, common stock endowed with nothing more than familiarity. But others, a few high flyers, larks, will sing soul-forming songs and trace their showy flights on graphs of sky. At night, owls pounce and keep the numbers down. But where's the paradise—when mice are bait And crested blue jays thieve their neighbors' nests? As justice goes, there's neither loss nor gain. But somewhere in the darkened loft of mind where wings are formed, we must be motiveless as grass to sing and soar and feed like them. [273]
This Leaning of Mine This leaning of mine, this quick turning toward your body while you dress, and undress, to catch a glimpse of a naked breast, bare skin, your buttocks; this morbid leaning of mine to spy in quick glance down an open blouse your cleavage, or trace your legs as they slide into their silks each morning's ride, and tired are stabled each night, yes, I do confess that even here under your watch and ward I did continuously violate your privacy. Yes, I trespass. I throw myself upon the mercy of your flesh, and nothing mitigate but plead the naked truth of you. It was the hiddenness in you, I swear, that did invite me in. [274]
Some Poems Some poems are written from the overflow and some from the barrel's dregs. And you? "I know by heart a few." Language steals nature's sound, or the other way around. The resonance of clay can take the breath away. Some fruit then ripen best when off the tree, the rest depending on the crop must hang until they drop. [275]
In Normandy In Normandy, the eyes, the eyes watched the armada come blossoming with cannonade, their fleurs de lis at home. In Normandy, the tourists tour the green lawn's graveyard site where soldiers fell in heat of day and died in cold of night. In dark Ardennes, the snow, the snow fell without a sound, where buried crimes exposed by thaw brought us this opened wound. In dark Ardennes, the trees, the trees have grown against the time when shattered limbs and frozen trunks heard the day's last hymn. In Burgundy the wine, the wine flows like an inland sea and sun-dried tourists play their part in this economy. In Burgundy, the sky, the sky blesses the fragile bud where rose or gold the grapes are gone into vats of red. [276]
The Body, At Liberty Bachelor of the soul, the body is given to solitudes that worry his uncles and aunts. Too comfortable by far, he will not listen. He wants for nothing. He browses the universe and turns up the question, What can a body do? What can a body do? In the paintings of St. Sebastian it's all arrows, and even Irene, who healed him back to life, couldn't keep him from a later martyrdom. Wounds that are married to the body provide with uncanny husbandry an embarrassment of riches, bumper crops, fertilized by ashes, as rains come down to wash the body in seasonal gestures of bliss. [277]
Cleft Here in this cleft Between my loving you and getting it right, I can't breathe a word. Fish out of water gasp, thrash, eventually die. No such luck. [278]
Three Ways of Approaching the Soul 1. The body's marriages are bound to fail. Flesh from the bone divorces, fades away With nothing of fidelity to show. It must have been the product of illusion: Small domesticities, cause and effect, The tyranny of bonds. Every postmortem Reveals something like this. Unlike the soul, Or billiard balls colliding, we're subject to No necessary force, moving at random From within. We're free: stars everywhere— State of the art—pinnacles of desire— From which we fall in blind flashes of light. 2. A random storm brings down a nest of dreams, Our birdlings lost, sending the frantic dreamer To harrow the sky in great sweeps of mind. Nothing but cloud, no paths to follow, nothing To track her brood until she stands stock still At the black hole of heaven's O and, mourning. Finds no branch of learning bending far Enough to hold her cracked-shell after-birth, And swoops in grieving verses toward the earth. This is the limb's nativity that sheds The season's cloth, the veering wings that bide The careless blow with V's of keening cries. 3. Night's body shines. Infinite space, beyond Stars, wraps the earth's skin in images, Dreams that the past unwinds in coils of genes. [279]
Think of the night's shut-down as a head-start, The brain humming, free of mortalities: This is a way of speaking of the soul, A kind of current. Nothing else makes sense. Without knowing itself, its energy Transforms matter into light, endlessly. Sleep is a state of being, knowing what The will defends against. Convergences Of parts, members, that's what makes it shine. [280]
Potsherds —for Roland Wise They came to our gaze as a porcelain pitcher's Still life with lemons on a checkered cloth And ended broken, thrown away, and dumped In the sea, the shards descending down and down, Washed clean, salt-scrubbed, through murk and crystal clear, To rest half-buried in the ocean's dark And restless sand, a vault of memories, A kitchen table's brief celebrity. How deep the wells of being are down there In aquatic breeding grounds where life teems, Spurts, surges, spreads and is never still. But O! O! how the artist's hand is still. I dream of underwater storms and tides Dislodging one glazed shard and raising it In tumbling swells and waves to a cold shore Where I find it, no bigger than a coin. I pocket it, gift from the sea: the art Of soul-making. Tell me the potter's gone And we are shards. I know too well we're lost. But tell me not my own soul's art is done. [281]
Saul Touster is professor emeritus at Brandeis University where he founded the Humanities and the Professions Program in 1981 and developed seminars on law and literature for judges, a widely acclaimed program which expanded over the years to include educators, lawyers, doctors, public officials, and leaders in the fields of business and health care. Touster obtained his undergraduate degree from Harvard in 1946, and his J.D. from Harvard in 1948. After law school, he practiced law in New York City, and in 1955 joined the faculty at SUNY Buffalo School of Law as a professor of law. After several years of university administration, he joined the Brandeis faculty in 1979 to direct the university's undergraduate education in law. In 1982 he was named the Joseph M. Proskauer Professor in Law and Social Welfare in the Brandeis Heller Graduate School for Advanced Studies in Social Welfare. Since his retirement in 1993, he has made a study of the Holocaust during which he discovered significant documents which served as the basis for two books, A Survivors' Haggadah, Made in 1946 by Survivors of the Camps for the First Passover after Liberation (American Jewish Historical Society, 1998)(Jewish Publication Society, 2000) and Beyond Words, A Holocaust History in Sixteen Woodcuts Done in 1945 by Miklos Adler, a Hungarian Survivor (American Jewish Historical Society, 2001). Touster's poetry appeared in a variety of little magazines over the years and a collection of his poetry, Still Lives and Other Lives, was published by the University of Missouri Press in 1966. "Green Apple: Still Life IV," "A Moral Still Life," "The Statue of Liberty," "Kafka's Funeral," "Memory of an Irish Housemaid," "Beside Lake Erie's Frozen Waters," "Four Complaints," "The Indwelling," "Lunch Hour Idyll," and "Salo's Release to the Press" are from Still Lives and Other Lives (University of Missouri Press, 1966)(and appear here with the permission of the University of Missouri Press). "Still Life with Porcelain Pitcher," "Still Life with Two Pears and Kitchen Knife," "Archaic Head," "All Birds Are," "This Leaning of Mine," "Some Poems," "In Normandy," "The Body, At Liberty," "Cleft," and "Three Ways of Approaching the Soul" have not been previously published. |
