Selected Poems
Moses Mendelssohn Enters Berlin Through the Rosenthal Gate
MOSES MENDELSSOHN ENTERS BERLIN THROUGH THE ROSENTHAL GATE
Say you've been walking for days,
fourteen years old, a brimming cup--
away from Dessau and the ghetto,
everything you know. You follow
your teacher, a hunger, a love.
With your bad shoes, a stammer
a slight hump, will you be the camel
that squeezes through? Suppose you've been
walking all night and you come to that gate.
(All the rest are closed for you.)
New sun striking ancient stone, so bright
it blinds. Now set a sentry
in your path, a sphinx
who questions you. Parable
insists on this, though what she asks--
what you reply-- will not survive.
And what to set above that portal
on the doorpost of your story? How shall I enter,
a Jew -- through words -- the smallest
opening? May they be
acceptable. In the sentry
book of 1743 is written:
Today there passed through the Rosenthal Gate
six oxen, seven swine, and one Jew.
Of What Do We Make Our Homes?
OF WHAT DO WE MAKE OUR HOMES?
Of wood. Of stone. Of earth. Of ice.
Some chicken wire, a few geranium seeds.
A mat. A stake. A shell. I knew a man
whose longing was his home. A woman
who built a nest in the wreckage of lust.
A child who lived in the house of her hands,
whose fingers were her only friends.
I knew a lover whose foundation stone
was flight. A tune that lodged all night
in a creaking limb. A penstemon
that pitched its tent in an open field.
A crested lark whose home was all of Portugal.
I knew a foot soldier whose flag
Was winding cloth; his home
was in the ground. A prayer. A rhyme.
A vow. Some mansions are of grief and some
Of hope. Of hay. Of leaves.
Of wind.
The Rope Was Innocent
THE ROPE WAS INNOCENT
and the ass, the two man-servants
below on the plain, the ram
the wood, the knife,
the fire. The pit, the rack,
the bullwhip-- all the instruments
were innocent: iron slept
cold in the ground. But love
was not innocent. It was love
who gave the order and love
who obeyed, who carried and stacked
the wood, offered wrists and
ankles for the binding. Love
prepared the fire and raised
the knife, and it was love
who lowered it. Bless the animals,
who live without mercy: the ape
with her beautiful breasts,
nursing her young, the tethered
ram, and the ass grazing there
in the lowlands -- little wooly ass
who cannot pray, who hears only
the braying of wind in the grass
and when death comes with its smell
of lion, answers: Here am I,
and falls to its knees without wonder.
Selling the Porsche
SELLING THE PORSCHE
For over a year it lay in the garage
bedded beside my homely Subaru
long, lean, muscular, beautiful,
bought in the joy of remission
six summers ago, in an access of hope.
It was there when I drove out each morning,
the battery long dead, though once it roared,
and there at night when I slid in beside it,
docking snugly in my narrow slip.
I was tough, sorting, tossing, warding off,
but when the driver came
with his dinosaur tow-truck, hauled
the body up the ramp and drove away
I went inside and had to sit and a shrill trail
of unfamiliar whoops rose from my throat.
It rose from that primeval cave where all the winds
contend—the aboriginal death wail,
ululations of abandoned brides.
Who is this woman, I wondered?
Who are all these women howling through me?
Interfaith
INTERFAITH
We made our deal. We would celebrate
all holidays, though we believed in none—
the more the better: Santa Claus
and Chanukah gelt, Easter eggs and matzoh balls,
bonfires at the Pueblo on Christmas eve as the men
in their blankets and guards in their uniforms
lifted the wobbly virgin in her painted
Sukkot to their shoulders, dancing her
around the plaza, guns going off, bonfires
crackling, bullet casings scattered in the sand.
It was all a panoply, a glorious jumble
of old and new, a shopping spree.
Why limit ourselves to one God, one tribe
when we could have them all? We believed
in life, in celebration: the bottle of champagne
tucked on its side in the fridge, in case.
Now that you’re beyond all revelry,
I’ve joined the synagogue of skeptics,
where I belong, where I’m at last at home.
The Innocent
THE INNOCENT
Alone and together, we stand on the platform
a mob of strangers awaiting a train. There may be
among us a wife-beater; surely, a thief. That man
in the blue dolphin tie; that frazzled mother,
gathering in her scattered girls; each of us caught
in the swill of our being; none of us blameless,
not one of us pure. Greedy, covetous,
selfish, vain, we have trafficked in lies; we
have practiced small cruelties. Even the baby,
asleep in a sling on his mother’s breast,
has been willful, has shaken with rage.
Yet, if fate arrives, as a wind, in a bullet,
a bomb, at the instant of shock, in the silent
heart of conflagration, we will all
be transformed into innocents, cleansed
in the fires of violence, punished not for any sins
committed— but for standing where we stand,
together in the soft, the vulnerable flesh.