Showing Results 1 - 10 of 70
An old Jew asked me near the Jaffa Gate:
“Is the Saxon Garden still there? The same as ever?
Is there a fountain? At the entrance from Czysta Street
In the old days confectioners had a shop there…
I saw my father drowning
In surging days.
His weak hand gave a last white flutter
In the distance—
And he was gone.
I kept on alone
Along the shore,
A boy still,
With small, thin legs,
And have…
Gray as a dove, toward evening, my grandfather came from the pasture;
He made up his bed and said a prayer of confession,
Then inwardly bade his farewell to the world
And closed his eyes, utterly…
Hush little baby. Forty-six years now
the night has rocked itself in my empty cradle
Now a gray head is rocked to sleep with the same tune:
Standing at the cradle’s head
No angel with two white wings…
This urn will be made of fired clay
Of native soil, from Poland, my country
In it are lodged the ashes of my parents
My brothers, daughter, and wife.
The urn will be simple, like a jug
With a small…
here in this carload i am eve with abel my son if you see my other son cain son of man tell him that i
Farewell, you cheerful folk of France,
My brethren’s merry throng,
A foolish nostalgia drives me hence,
I’ll be back, though, before long.
Imagine—I yearn beyond belief
For the smell of heather and…
I set my table with metaphor:
the curling parsley—green sign nailed to the doors
of God’s underground; salt of desert and eyes;
the roasted shank bone of a Pascal lamb,
relic of sacrifice and…
Would you, mama, believe if I told
That everything here is changed into gold,
That gold is made from iron and blood,
Day and night, from iron and blood?
—My son, from a mother you cannot hide—
A…
The women of our family will come to me in dreams at night and say:
Modestly we carried a pure blood across generations,
Bringing it to you like well-guarded wine from the kosher
Cellars of our…