I thought about what you asked me
on the train to Delaware the other day.
“What makes you so anxious?,” you said
It’s a fair question, as fair as any I suppose.
***
If you could feel yourself
Being thrown
down a well and
landing at the
Bottom
Choking
on freezing water
broken-backed
but still
alive
If you could hear the
Mobs
Coming
with sharpened scythes
laughing, drunken and
singing
“Kill the ones who killed our Lord”
If you could smell the
soft skin of the
Torah
Burning
and see
the dancing flames
reflected
In the
Dark
Parts
of your children’s
eyes
If you could flee past
pools of
Human
Blood
and know that
your town
is no more
than an abattoir
Then like me
you and your children’s
children
children
children
would be
Forever
Anxious
and running
And never without
their
Bags
Packed
and
waiting
at the door
Never rooted
Or safe
Or home
Or at rest
Even on the Sabbath you would
dream with
the same fear that
Your
Forebears
carried
in each and
every one
of their cells
I descend from the Tribe
of
Long memory
The Clan of
ineradicable memory
The Minyan of
Unmitigated
memory
I am of the
People
whose dark dreams
never fade
I walk astride
beautiful sinners
resplendent priests
callow princesses
stillborn prophets
long-limbed dancers
tearful poets
tongue-tied judges
penitent mothers
dutiful fathers
scholarly women
lustful saints
dying soldiers
wizened beggars
hapless angels
climaxing cherubim
sing-along seraphs and a
Living
God
who stays
Stone
Silent
As he leads us
to the next
Parting
of the next
Red
Sea
I am brother
to the horde
who cannot unburden
themselves from their own
Memory
Both the blessed ones
and the accursed ones alike.
