Hospice

 

L. S. Asekoff

In this element season with its surprising roses

The lady of the house is at home to strangers.

Under eaves of the mourning dove

Windchimes tinlde icily. Solemn whispers describe

The journey soon to be taken.

Close your eyes, breathe deeply, you will see

Black dots on a map, points of light in a ?rmament.

Now repeat?after me: We take a train  We take a train .. .

Rouen 
or Rouen .. .

?cwetake  6: we take  death  death  star . . . a star  Yet after they leave

She is alone with the pain again, (Si the pearly glow??

Grains of hope on a night tray.

Between sleeping, waking, between one pill ?St another,
Her daughters appear?the dark one bearing a rainbow of wishes,
The pale one her shy downcast smile.
How long, my darlings? How long is a piece of string?
The good weaver teaches her art to others, so
She tells them about the rabbi?s red daughters,
The woman who lost her babies to the sea,
The angel of Ravensbrueck fat the three brothers:
Mystic graphologist, Blau Weiss pioneer, 5t he
Who gave her the gold ring she still wears.
Where are they now? On this planet of ashes
God winks?whole worlds disappear. Children, she says,
Life never tires asking its question,
<35 this also is part of it, an experience
Not to be missed. Still, after so many farewells,
she is surprised
How the sweet sadness sweeps over her
Wave after wave. Perhaps there is no end
To what we can learn (35, yes, time for tears, too.
Staring at a blue-veined arm, she confesses,
I feel like a spy in my own country.

78 TIKKUN VOL. 4, No. 2

 

Home, for a time, now at healing,

Amid ?owering lemon, feathery eucalyptus,
The improbable richness of California winter,
In this house of women without men

She practices the patient arts,

Reading the memoirs of Mandelstam?s widow,

Talking on the telephone to concerned distant voices,
Sewing a pearl button on her favorite nightgown.
Just yesterday, propped at the window, she wrote:

I feel slowly my being drift out my ?ngertips,
The miracle of my transplanted life,

Yellow roses in the blue venetian vase

D. brought me from Murano

hanging over it, quite by chance,

The black madonna of Czenstochow .. .

Early this morning she wakes to cowbells in Switzerland.

Out the white world, the fog world,

A shape drifts toward her?Anna, the beekeeper?s daughter,

In her pale veil, long white gloves.

How slowly she moves down the winding path
Gathering in her arms one by one

The honeyed light from darkening hives.

 

Beyond her, winter stars glimmer?ports of call.

The Wrestler

 

Richard 5. Chess

When that stinking angel Ed, the smartest boy
in Violet shorts, lifted and dropped
me to the mat, when that slob landed
on me, I went deaf to the skinny birds
who ringed the mat with jeers,
heard only my breath escaping.
For a dizzy moment I confused him
with One of the dumbbell-tough thugs
who ?icks his ashes at girlish boys,
but then I flipped onto my safe belly
and rose, ass ?rst, to shake this nuisance
from my back.
He dropped me by the thighs this time
and worked my shoulder blades
toward the ?oor. No prayer could save me.
On the count of three Ed rose
like vapor and vanished down a dark corridor
toward some book, no doubt,
leaving me, the blessed son of Isaac,
crushed on the matted earth
from which my children have risen
to take revenge.

Anger

 

Caroline Pz'nkelstez'zz

Selina, a child not a child not a child but a Jew,
goes to the store for milk. This is Lodz
where rumor has the chickens plotting . . .

In their necklaces of lice the chickens sway
and gabhle at their prayers as if . ..
as if the holy Sabbath were a barnyard!

Soon. Soon. This is Lodz the dogs will eat.

79