and when I told the woman - a survivor, a fighter in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising - about the Holocaust conference in Maine, and how many of the people there had known nothing, she said, They still know nothing.
Yisgadal v’yiskadash sh’me rabbo,
b’olmo deevro chiruseh v’yamlick
malchuseh
If I said kaddish for each one
If I were to mourn properly
I would not be done
If I were to mourn
each artist seamstress schnorrer midwife baker
each fiddler talker tailor shopkeeper
each yente each Communist each Zionist
each doctor pedlar beggar Bundist rabbi
each prostitute each file clerk each lesbian
each fighter the old woman in the photograph from
Hungary holding the hand of the child whose
socks droop each Jew
b’chayechon uvyo-mechon, uv’chayey
d’ chol beys yisroel
I would not be done yet
it was more than death was more the people’s
heart a language I have
to study to practice speaking with
old people songs to collect transcribing
from records or from the few
who know a culture which might have died
in this country which eats culture a death
we call normal culture astonishing
in its variety a taste a smell a twist of song
that was Vilna
Odessa
Cracow
Covner-Gberna
Warsaw
these were once Jewish sounds
baagolo uvizman koreev v’imru omen
Tuesday my father died Wednesday
the rabbi who never met my father met with us
my mother my father’s sisters the daughters
5 minutes before the funeral was to begin
to prepare the eulogy He asked
if my father had belonged to any organizations if
people from his place of business had come
and he said since there were no sons
he would say kaddish for my father
and I did not tell the rabbi my father was broken
before he died I did not describe his twisted body asbestos
in his lungs I did not explain my father worked
6 days plus 2 nights a week paid
for my eyeglasses cavities penicillin shots
I did not say he joined no temple
I did not say he loved the sound of Yiddish but
would not speak it
I did not mention he beat us the children
but not his wife I did not reveal his high point in life
a trip with his buddies to the Chicago World’s Fair
in a ‘32 Ford I did not sat he changed his name he was
Kantrowitz he became Kaye I did not say he built
a business retail and taught me
never cross a picket line.
Y’he sh’meh rabbo m’vorach l’olam
ulolmey olmayo
I did not tell the rabbi my father listened carefully
to all things Jewish
nor did I tell him
save your prayers
I said, I will speak at this funeral
and I did to mourn him properly
*
he taught me all men are equal before I knew
to suspect the words before I learned
to fight with him to say people all
people daddy and please don’t say
girl
sh’med d’kud-sho b’reech-hu
About Hitler I always knew
Chanukah we lit candles said
no prayers but got presents red sweaters ball bearings sang
no songs but Hatikvah played on the menorah like
it was out song I knew I belonged to Jews
I knew I was part of Israel
l’elo min kol birchoso v’shiroso
tushb’choso v’necehmoso daamiron
and so I do
and so I am
and so when I heard about children women
families shot stabbed at the table in Shatilla
Sabra I couldn’t breather
and I was almost too afraid to mourn
let me be plain
Jews sent up flares
for christians to kill by
let me absorb
yes they are men soldiers also, my people my father loved
all things Jewish and should I disown?
I who will be blamed with the others again
let me mourn if anything
is holy flesh
so readily torn from the skeleton
let me rock my body like a scared child -
of what skin what tongue which people?
whose child is this?
the answer says if the child shall
live die suffer kill
let me be as strong as history
let me join those who refuse
let there be time
let it be possible
b’olmo v’imru omen. Y’he sh’lomo rabbo
min sh’mayo
let no faction keep me
from those who suffer
let no faction keep me from those who needed a home
and found one
let no faction keep me from those
who need a home now
*
y’chayim olenu v’al kol yisroel.
v’imru omen.
and in Rome where Jesus the dead Jew is raised
against us
as in Kansas or California
a synagogue blown up for being a Jew place
a baby blown up for being a Jew baby
in shul for the high holy days
Oseh sholom bimromo, hu’ya aseh
if there’s a Jew alive if a sin is always Jewish sin this baby
paid again nothing is expiated there is
blood in the camps the bulldozers come to push
bodies into hiding this is what men do
Gemayel is received at the UN with applause
this is the Jewish problem
my father loved all things Jewish
a culture astonishing in its variety was
if I were to mourn properly
I would not be done
sholom olenu v’al kol isroel. v’imru
omen.
1983
