Vivian Eden || WANDERING JEWS

Vivian Eden ||

WANDERING JEWS

            
Uncle Mendel, who had hair like
David Ben Gurion, was a payntner,
walls, not pictures. Afraid
of heights, he wouldn't climb ladders
or paint above the second floor. In New York.
 
Short on dollars, he saved a dime.
One Jewish New Year, Roish Hashona,
Mendel circled around the very big table
(eight aunts, eight uncles and Zaydeh remained),
dunking the one teabag into seventeen
yahrzeit glasses, not china cups,
of freshly boiled water.
 
Eppis, gezint, nu, takkeh, schoin
they'd chatter, and clink the glasses,
after dinner, Lishona toiva tikasevu,
as the younger cousins played team-tag
in English in the second-floor apartment
that smelled of mothballs and kasha,
keeping strictly out of The Boarder's room
while the older cousins
“went out for a walk,”
coming back smelling of smoke.
 
Aunt Rosie, who had hair like
Golda Meir, took in foster kids,
ninety of them in forty years. One made
money – In business? In crime? – died
young and left her a legacy in his will
 
so with bundles of kosher pots (dairy, not meat),
teabags and kasha, Rose and Mendel wandered,
by ship, not plane: Liverpool, Lisbon, Gibraltar,
Haifa, Marseilles, Buenos Aires and back.
Eppis, gezint, nu, takkeh, schoin,
Lishona toiva tikasevu.
*

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Salman Masalha ||

Death Retouched

All around pain is aflame
From the desert to the sea.
Here my blood is now fair game,
This land, an abyss for me.

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A government of poetic justice

 

Israel election results: Letting Gantz form Israel's next government would be poetic justice

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W. H. Auden || Funeral Blues

W. H. Auden ||

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

source

For Hebrew, press here

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Reaching Gandhi in Our Times

I re-read Gandhiji, but the texts did not translate into painting. How to retrieve him from his busts and statuary on the road side corners, city squares, from postage stamps and rupee notes?

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