VI. Will

 

Ellipses

 

I can’t

I must

I tremble

I faint

 

I wake

I will

I won’t

I should

 

I can’t

I must

I shall

I shake

 

I want

I would

I go

I wait

 

I knock

I enter

I do

 

I did

 

Thank God

                      —James B. Nicola

 

 *

 

We Fought Back

(for Mordecai Anielewicz and the Warsaw Ghetto Fighters)

 

We rose to fight.  Defiant.  Fierce will born

of pain.  Left our mark: wrote our own history

with pistols, rifles, Molotov cocktails, a few machine guns.

To scream the truth — cries fired by fear and fury

 

to the deaf world that had closed its gates, abandoned us.*

We chose our own death.  Fighting.  That first day

We rose up, fought back, stunned the SS,

forced their death-stained squads to flee; held them at bay

 

a month, fighting from alleyways, rooftops,

burning buildings, smoke and gas-filled bunkers

they flushed us from.  We fought against all hope,

that we would survive their flamethrowers, artillery, tanks.

 

We fought to see our dream come true: we fought back.

And leapt aflame from roofs, defiant —

     we fought and left our mark.

                                                  —Amos Neufeld

 

*April 19, 1943

 

 * 

 

Questions in darkened rooms

הֵיאַךְ נַנִּיחַ אֶת אֱלֹהֵינוּ שֶׁבַּשָּׁמַיִם וְנַעֲבוֹד עֲבוֹדָה זָרָה

                Sanhedrin 67

 

Doubts creep in on wings of grief.

Or greed. I am broken by news

of a broken world. Or, I want more

goodies than fate would grant me.

 

So, I sequester myself in a dark room.

Candles burning, incense. Zen with a touch

of Jewish credibility? Until out of the gloom

a voice: whispers Let’s worship an idol—

words with a thin credibility to help

cast off the burden of being a Jew.

 

From somewhere out of the shadows, I cry out:

How can I possibly  jettison the yoke of Hashem?

Chosen, unique, aching I return to the core.

Continue crying and carry on the flickering

light of truth in darkening times.

                                                —Vera Schwarcz

 

 * 

 

Wedded to Jerusalem 

שֶׁקְּדוּשָּׁה רִאשׁוֹנָה קִידְּשָׁה לִשְׁעָתָהּ וְקִידְּשָׁה לֶעָתִיד לָבֹא

               

 Not only because I live here.

More because every day there is a whiff in the air

from King David’s and King Solomon’s time,

a lingering commitment, an eternal marriage bond

between the Jewish people and this piece of land

that rises(noisily, brashly) above the mundane.

 

Our partner is the Divine that may still be glimpsed

in children’s laughter, elders ambling up-hill slowly,

bird song loud beyond the eye-catching, ear-jarring

parakeets, lotus unfurling in the community garden.

 

Being married to the holiest city in the world is not easy.

We struggle to earn her love afresh each day.

                                                                   —Vera Schwarcz

 

 *

 

BLINKING LIFE

Jerusalem, 20.11.18

 

I have forgotten how to roar –

Just a clearing of the throat with half a voice.

The friable softness of Divine forgetfulness is the featherbed of my days.

               I curl up in nothing.

Life stares at me with a nasal air.

With the gaze of a calf.

Flesh.

Life blinks when the light is too blinding.

Immediately one pulls the blanket over another full year.

Fetus.

The nothing gives birth to will ex nihilo.

And the fact that there is nothing means there is being.

                                                                                —Imri Perel

                                                                                    tr. EC

 

 *

 

[UNTITLED]

 

I will come before the Throne of Glory

with my pride full of holes

my tail between my legs

sobbing the Song of the Partisans.

                                                  —Hamutal Bar-Yosef

                                                      tr. EC

 

 * 

 

[UNTITLED} 

 

Not only snakes shed their skin

One might think that only snakes and other
     selected creatures are given to shed their skin

A human being can also shed a hard-
     to-live-in skin   Someone who sheds looks like

someone who is clean   with eyes giving light
     the feel of backbone   Being human   shedding

isn’t so easy   One has to work at it   wrestling
     with tangled   messy thoughts   omitting speech

that confuses   misleads   One must keep an eye

     on the demons-in-waiting   their coarse impulse behind

every conduct that wounds   Letting them lose
     their hold   the scales of cold-skin shrinking

breaking apart   falling away   Letting them
     float off under a wave of deep sighing breath . . .

Comes the shaking   pure raw trembling
     like a woman in labor   entering the trembling

letting the old skin shrivel behind
     Someone who loves this being will surely witness

a new shine   a deep resolve   a fearless look

                                                                  —Reizel Polak
                                                                      2017

 

*

 

Three POEMS

 

[untitled]

 

1

The will to create did not break forth

It listened mutely to my circles

                                           Around and around

                                                                             Widening

           Watery, sometimes devious

How long

 

Till certainty ripens

     And the cry of Here am I

           Goes up from the abyss of doubt

From the abyss

Of not being.

 

2

The ability to watch myself

Vacillate

Brought forth compassion

And patience

A listening

To being as it becomes

A listening

To Your circles. 

 

 

[UNTITLED]

 

Out of confusion and darkness a new being is woven

It is woven despite and because of

In dark of eclipse in collisions in falls in disappointments

When there is no air

In moments of beauty in a glance in listening in the touch of a hand

It is woven in the mountains, in the sounds of the shepherd’s flute and in bustling cities

And I am longing

For the appearance

Rise, Shekhinah, from the dust

Put on the garments of your splendor.

 

 

TO THE RETURNED CAPTIVES

 

Why should we be left out

And if we dwelt in darkness for years

Doubled forces of life

Will be your portion.

 

Arise, put on strength,

To lead the people in dances.

 

You have looked with your eyes at hell

At the evil ones

And did not bow

Did not bend the knee

 

A drum beats with enlivening rhythm

Straightening the heart’s crooked places

 

Daughters of valor

Like Sarah in Pharaoh’s castle

Crowned with splendor.

Fearless daughters of Israel

Throw off pettiness and depression

Throw off victimhood

Proclaimers of resurgence.

                                        —Tziporah Faiga Lifshitz

                                            tr. EC

 

*

 

Just a heart

 

While the weary and despairing

             seek coherence, meaning, and finality

 What we carry

       we know will renew

                   outlasting even the starling swarms and the

                                                                    estuarine currents

                         and just a heart ties together its end and

                                                                             its beginning

                                                                                                 —Andrew Oram

 

*

 

FUSION

 

That visible as violence might burn

In the air the fusion of concerted minds

By insight ineluctably confined

In a magnetic circle of concern;

That thus a power might generate to turn

A counter-movement to entropic time

And lend attraction to the whole and prime

To which all fleeing fractions must return—

This I have seen, not in prophetic trance

But in the reasoning of a mind compelled

By the sheer daylight force of evidence

That this must and can be. I have not erred:

I swear by earth and stars, by me and you

That though the world be false, yet this is true.

                                                                      —Esther Cameron