Krakow
for my grandmother
I can picture what she wore,
visiting her aunt in the hospital in Krakow.
She was always elegant–
white jacket trimmed in black
white leather gloves and her soft hat
folding over her face.
Behind the gauze veil her eyes were clear grey.
And he saw her
from across the room. It was like him
to fall in love like that,
he was—oh—such a romantic! And he wasn’t really
her equal. He sold textiles, you know,
in Sosnowiec! A factory town!
Tall and skinny, too; not at all handsome—
No man could be, with such red hair—
And his great-grandfather (or was it his great-great grandfather?)
was a rebbe—a Hassid! I’ve heard that
even today old women in filthy shawls
walk miles to put stones on the rebbe’s grave.
Such superstition!
But he came, on
a clear, gray morning, when the snow lay
in great curves and there was no wind.
The light hung behind the broad window
of the big room, the wine-colored rug, the hollow in the
gray cushions where he sat,
silk hat carefully removed.
A lady, she was, and he
a small-town merchant.
And he took her away.
But on certain cold, still days
she imagines she is still there–
Krakow
the shining city
On clear mornings, they say,
the Austrian princess
walks in the white tower
and gazes over the mountains—
You can hear the bells
as far as Warsaw.
~
Anniversary
I never heard my parents recite the Kaddish
There were only the squat unlovely candles in plain glass jars
set out on memorial holidays
—the public yahrzeit for those dateless dead
murdered in Oswiecim
or shot on the streets of Sosnowiec.
The souls of my grandparents float over us all year
graveless, light, jesting
They belong to no day and every day
no one and everyone
Which day, I wonder, will belong to my father? My mother?
I am still an untouched bride in the matter of yahrzeits.
Why can’t I feel the cold breath of those days on my cheek
as I pass through them, all unknowing, year after year?
Why not a chill presentiment
as I rise with the mourners on a Friday night?
And why is there no tiny frisson of recognition
no touch of cold familiar
on that day that will be my own?
~
Yom Hashoah
for Sonia
First come the sirens
hard and unrelenting in the midday sun
and then everything stops.
A taxi driver, mid-turn, stalls his engine
and sits, hands clasped on the steering wheel;
A passenger gets out of the car and leans,
head bowed, on the half-open car door;
A doctor in a hospital ward, discussing a case with a colleague,
poses mid-sentence, hands on hips, eyes fixed on a point on the wall;
A patient sits cross-legged, motionless, in the waiting room,
the TV flickering soundlessly;
A man in a restaurant freezes, fork in hand,
white napkin arrested mid-flight.
The whole world waits
even time seems to end
an eternal two minutes
an immortal six million
all held, suspended
in a tableau
of remembrance.
Yom Hashoah is the day of remembrance for the six million Jews who were killed in the Holocaust. Every year on this day, the entire state of Israel stops to remember.
__________