in the south where we are busy slaughtering each other. There’s no time for flowers amid burnt bodies and ruins. Scalding summer will pass, autumn will arrive unnoticed. If only an early winter rain would come, send us all indoors, there to stand at shattered thresholds and watch the yellow sky weep and weep for…
(Taken in Warsaw, 1936) I will not infer from your black suit and stiff blanched collar an absolutist’s stance since moot distinctions were your passion, nor read prophecy into your ashen beard though your forehead, pale as a candle, burned, as did the bald dome beneath your silk skullcap. Your terse lips questioned transcendence, your…
For Irving Ladin, died October 2007 It’s different in the house of death. There’s family here too but no one crowds around the bed. They hang back in the shadows waiting for you to come to them. The mother and father you left marinating in their accents whisper their Russian version of the local dialect….
You say because I’m always about to die, I am truly alive. My shadow stretches over fallen branches, my skin smiles under fingers of light, grass smiles along the path You say is mine. When You look at me, you see a child. When I look at You, I see a woman under a tree,…
You and me on Carlisle Street feels so illegitimate, holding hands strolling along stands of Tasmanian fruits and music stores two bars, more urbane than urban where the Jewish kids meet. flirt. buy each other drinks. but always go home alone. A rabbi once told us always have guests for Shabbos dinner. It’s a segulah…
Translated by Rachel Tzvia Back It’s been a lifetime together. Fifty years? Sixty? How many? We were never like that coiled knot only the slash of the sword could undo. I turned my back on you. You turned your back on me though still we pulled toward each other like magnets to the pole like…
Getty Images “You are the sum total of everything you’ve ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot — it’s all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that, I try to make sure my experiences are positive.” — Maya Angelou My first experience of Maya Angelou, who died this week at the…
I am walking. I am always walking. Where am I walking? I am not here. From where is this kindling in my arms? This fire? They are not mine. I am not mine. In vain – I am in your footsteps, in vain… I know, my son, I am the father. I lead you, the…
