Selected Poems, 1956-1968 Read online

  Government was done in palaces.

  Judges, their fortunes found in law,

  reclining and cosmopolitan, praised reason.

  Commerce like a strong wild garden

  flourished in the street.

  The coins were bright, the crest on coins precise,

  new ones looked almost wet.

  Why did Isaiah rage and cry,

  Jerusalem is ruined,

  your cities are burned with fire?

  On the fragrant hills of Gilboa

  were the shepherds ever calmer,

  the sheep fatter, the white wool whiter?

  There were fig trees, cedar, orchards

  where men worked in perfume all day long.

  New mines as fresh as pomegranates.

  Robbers were gone from the roads,

  the highways were straight.

  There were years of wheat against famine.

  I 73

  Enemies? Who has heard of a righteous state

  that has no enemies,

  but the young were strong, archers cunning,

  their arrows accurate.

  Why then this fool Isaiah,

  smelling vaguely of wilderness himself,

  why did he shout,

  Your country is desolate?

  Now will I sing to my well-beloved

  a song of my beloved touching her hair

  which is pure metal black

  no rebel prince can change to dross,

  of my beloved touching her body

  no false swearer can corrupt,

  of my beloved touching her mind

  no faithless counsellor can inflame,

  of my behJved touching the mountains of spices

  making them beauty instead of burning.

  Now plunged in unutterable love

  Isaiah wanders, chosen, stumbling

  against the sculptured walls which consume

  their full age in his embrace and powder

  as he goes by. He reels beyond

  the falling dust of spires and domes,

  obliterating ritual: the Holy Name, half-spoken,

  is lost on the cantor's tongue; their pages barren,

  congregations blink, agonized and dumb.

  In the turns of his journey

  heavy trees he sleeps under

  mature into cinder and crumble:

  whole orchards join the wind

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  like rising Hocks of ravens.

  The rocks go back to water, the water to waste.

  And while Isaiah gently hums a sound

  to make the guilty country uncondemned,

  all men, truthfully desolate and lonely,

  as though witnessing a miracle,

  behold in beauty the faces of one another.

  I 7s

  T H E G E N I U S

  For you

  I will be a ghetto jew

  and dance

  and put white stockings

  on my twisted limbs

  and poison wells

  across the town

  For you

  I will be an apostate jew

  and tell the Spanish priest

  of the blood vow

  in the Talmud

  and where the bones

  of the child are hid

  For you

  I will be a banker jew

  and bring to ruin

  a proud old hunting king

  and end his line

  For you

  I will be a Broadway jew

  and cry in theatres

  for my mother

  and sell bargain goods

  beneath the counter

  For you

  I will be a doctor jew

  and search

  in all the garbage cans

  for foreskins

  to sew back again

  For you

  I will be a Dachau jew

  and lie down in lime

  with twisted limbs

  and bloated pain

  no mind can understand

  I 77

  L I N E S F R O M M Y G R A N D F A T H E R ' S

  J O U R N A L

  I am one of those who could tell every word the pin

  went through. Page after page I could imagine the scar

  in a thousand crowned letters.

  The dancing floor of the pin is bereft of angels. The

  Christians no longer want to debate. Jews have forgotten

  the best arguments. If I spelled out the Principles of Faith

  I would be barking on the moon.

  I will never be free from this old tyranny: "I believe

  with a perfect faith . . . .

  "

  Why make trouble? It is better to stutter than sing. Become like the early Moses: dreamless of Pharaoh. Become like Abram: dreamless of a longer name. Become like a

  weak Rachel: be comforted, not comfortless . . .

  There was a promise to me from a rainbow, there was

  a covenant with me after a flood drowned all my friends,

  inundated every field: the ones we had planted with food

  and the ones we had left untilled.

  Who keeps promises except in business? We were not

  permitted to own land in Russia. Who wants to own land

  anywhere? I stare dumbfounded at the trees. Montreal

  trees, New York trees, Kovno trees. I never wanted to own

  one. I laugh at the scholars in real estate . . .

  Soldiers in close formation. Paratroops in a white Tel

  Aviv street. Who dares disdain an answer to the ovens?

  Any answer.

  I did not like to see the young men stunted in the Polish ghetto. Their curved backs were not beautiful. Forgive 7s I

  me, it gives me no pleasure to see them in uniform. I do

  not thrill to the sight of Jewish battalions.

  But there is only one choice between ghettos and battalions, between whips and the weariest patriotic arrogance . .

  I wanted to keep my body free as when it woke up in

  Eden. I kept it strong. There are commandments.

  Erase from my flesh the marks of my own whip. Heal

  the razor slashes on my arms and throat. Remove the

  metal clamps from my fingers. Repair the bones I have

  crushed in the door.

  Do not let me lie down with spiders. Do not let me

  encourage insects against my eyes. Do not let me make

  my living nest with worms or apply to my stomach the

  comb of iron or bind my genitals with cord.

  It is strange that even now prayer is my natural language . . . .

  Night, my old night. The same in every city, beside

  every lake. It ambushes a thicket of thrushes. It feeds on

  the houses and fields. It consumes my journals of poems.

  The black, the loss of sun: it will always frighten me.

  It will always lead me to experiment. My journal is filled

  with combinations. I adjust prayers like the beads of an

  abacus . . . .

  Thou. Reach into the vineyard of arteries for my heart.

  Eat the fruit of ignorance and share with me the mist and

  fragrance of dying.

  Thou. Your fist in my chest is heavier than any bereavement, heavier than Eden, heavier than the Torah scroll. . . .

  79

  The language in which I was trained: spoken in despair

  of priestliness.

  This is not meant for any pulpit, not for men to chant

  or tell their children. Not beautiful enough.

  But perhaps this can suggest a passion. Perhaps this

  passion could be brought to clarify, make more radiant,

  the standing Law.

  Let judges secretly despair of justice: their verdicts will

  be more acute. Let generals secretly despair of triumph;

  killing will b
e defamed. Let priests secretly despair of

  faith: their compassion will be true. It is the tension . . . .

  My poems and dictionaries were written at night from

  my desk or from my bed. Let them cry loudly for life at

  your hand. Let me be purified by their creation. Challenge

  me with purity.

  0 break down these walls with music. Purge from my

  flesh the need to sleep. Give me eyes for your darkness.

  Give me legs for your mountains. Let me climb to your

  face with my argument. If I am unprepared, unclean, lead

  me first to deserts full of jackals and wolves where I will

  learn what glory or humility the sand can teach, and from

  beasts the direction of my evil.

  I did not wish to dishonour the scrolls with my logic,

  or David with my songs. In my work I meant to love you

  but my voice dissipated somewhere before your infinite

  regions. And when I gazed toward your eyes all the bristling hills of Judea intervened.

  I played with the idea that I was the Messiah.

  I saw a man gouge out his eye,

  hold it in his fist

  until the nursing sky

  So I

  grew round it like a vast and loving face.

  With shafts of light

  I saw him mine his wrist

  until his blood filled out the rest of space

  and settled softly on the world

  like morning mist.

  Who could resist such fireworks?

  I wrestled hard in Galilee.

  In the rubbish of pyramids

  and strawless bricks

  I felled my gentle enemy.

  I destroyed his cloak of stars.

  It was an insult to our human flesh,

  worse than scars.

  If we could face his work, submit it to annotation.

  You raged before them

  like the dreams of their old-time God.

  You smashed your body

  like tablets of the Law.

  You drove them from the temple counters.

  Your whip on their loins

  was a beginning of trouble.

  Your thorns in their hearts

  was an end to love.

  0 come back to our books.

  Decorate the Law with human commentary.

  Do not invoke a spectacular death.

  There is so much to explain-

  the miracles obscure your beauty . .

  I B I

  Doubting everything that I was made to write. My

  dictionaries groaning with lies. Driven back to Genesis.

  Doubting where every word began. What saint had shifted

  a meaning to illustrate a parable. Even beyond Genesis,

  until I stood outside my community, like the man who

  took too many steps on Sabbath. Faced a desolation which

  was unheroic, unbiblical, no dramatic beasts.

  The real deserts are outside of tradition.

  The chimneys are smoking. The little wooden synagogues are filled with men. Perhaps they will stumble on my books of interpretation, useful to anyone but me.

  The white tablecloths-whiter when you spill the

  wine . . . .

  Desolation means no angels to wrestle. I saw my brothers dance in Poland. Before the final fire I heard them sing. I could not put away my scholarship or my experiments with blasphemy.

  (In Prague their Golem slept.)

  Desolation means no ravens, no black symbols. The carcass of the rotting dog cannot speak for you. The ovens have no tongue. The flames thud against the stone roofs.

  I cannot claim that sound.

  Desolation means no comparisons . . . .

  "Our needs are so manifold, we dare not declare them."

  It is painful to recall a past intensity, to estimate your

  distance from the Belsen heap, to make your peace with

  numbers. Just to get up each morning is to make a kind

  of peace.

  It is something to have fled several cities. I am glad

  that I could run, that I could learn twelve languages, that

  I escaped conscription with a trick, that borders were only

  82 I

  stones in an empty road, that I kept my journal.

  Let me refuse solutions, refuse to be comforted.

  Tonight the sky is luminous. Roads of cloud repeat

  themselves like the ribs of some vast skeleton.

  The easy gulls seem to embody a doomed conception

  of the sublime as they wheel and disappear into the darkness of the mountain. They leave the heart, they abandon the heart to the Milky Way, that drunkard's glittering line

  to a physical god. . . .

  Sometimes, when the sky is this bright, it seems that if

  I could only force myself to stare hard at the black hills

  could recover the gulls. It seems that nothing is lost

  that is not forsaken : The rich old treasures still glow in

  the sand under the tumbled battlement; wrapped in a

  starry flag a master-God floats through the firmament like

  a childless kite.

  I will never be free from this tyranny.

  A tradition composed of the exuviae of visions. I must

  resist it. It is like the garbage river through a city: beautiful by day and beautiful by night, but always unfit for bathing.

  There were beautiful rules: a way to hear thunder,

  praise a wise man, watch a rainbow, learn of tragedy.

  All my family were priests, from Aaron to my father. It

  was my honour to close the eyes of my famous teacher.

  Prayer makes speech a ceremony. To observe this ritual

  in the absence of arks, altars, a listening sky: this is a rich

  discipline.

  I stare dumbfounded at the trees. I imagine the scar in

  a thousand crowned letters. Let me never speak casually.

  Inscription for the family spice-box:

  Make my body

  a pomander for worms

  and my soul

  the fragrance of cloves.

  Let the spoiled Sabbath

  leave no scent.

  Keep my mouth

  from foul speech.

  Lead your priest

  from grave to vineyard.

  Lay him down

  where air is sweet.

  III / Flowers for Hitler

  W H A T I ' M D O I N G H E R E

  I do not know if the world has lied

  I have lied

  I do not know if the world has conspired against love

  I have conspired against love

  The atmosphere of torture is no comfort

  I have tortured

  Even without the mushroom cloud

  still I would have hated

  Listen

  I would have done the same things

  even if there were no death

  I will not be held like a drunkard

  under the cold tap of facts

  I refuse the universal alibi

  Like an empty telephone booth passed at night

  and remembered

  like mirrors in a movie palace lobby consulted

  only on the way out

  like a nymphomaniac who binds a thousand

  into strange brotherhood

  I wait

  for each one of you to confess

  T H E H E A R T H

  The day wasn't exactly my own

  since I checked

  and found it on a public calendar.

  Tripping over many pairs of legs

  as I walked down the park

  I also learned my lust

  was not so rare a masterpiece.

  Buildings actually built

  wars planned with blood and fought

  men who rose to genera
ls

  deserved an honest thought

  as I walked down the park.

  I came back quietly to your house

  which has a place on a street.

  Not a single other house

  disappeared when I came back.

  You said some suffering

  had taught me that.

  I'm slow to learn I began

  to speak of stars and hurricanes.

  Come here little Galileoyou undressed my vision-

  it's happier and easier by far

  or cities wouldn't be so big.

  Later you worked over lace

  and I numbered many things

  your fingers and all fingers did.

  88 1

  As if to pay me a sweet

  for my ardour on the rug

  you wondered in the middle of a stitch:

  Now what about those stars and hurricanes?

  T H E D R A W E R ' S C O N D I T I O N

  O N N O V E M B E R 2 8 , 1 9 6 1

  Is there anything emptier

  than the drawer where

  you used to store your opium?

  How like a black-eyed susan

  blinded into ordinary daisy

  is my pretty kitchen drawer!

  How like a nose sans nostrils

  is my bare wooden drawer!

  How like an eggless basket!

  How like a pool sans tortoise!

  My hand has explored

  my drawer like a rat

  in an experiment of mazes.

  Reader, I may safely say

  there's not an emptier drawer

  in all of Christendom!

  I Sg

  T H E S U I T

  I am locked in a very expensive suit

  old elegant and enduring

  Only my hair has been able to get free

  but someone has been leaving

  their dandruff in it

  Now I will tell you

  all there is to know about optimism

  Each day in hubcap mirror

  in soup reflection

  in other people's spectacles

  I check my hair

  for an army of Alpinists

  for Indian rope trick masters

  for tangled aviators

  for dove and albatross

  for insect suicides

  for abominable snowmen

  I check my hair

  for aerialists of every kind

  Dedicated as an automatic elevator

  I comb my hair for possibilities

  I stick my neck out

  I lean illegally from locomotive windows

  and only for the barber

  do I wear a hat

  go I

  I N D I C T M E N T O F T H E B L U E H O L E

  January 28 1 962

  You must have heard me tonight

  I mentioned you Boo times