ס'איז אן עמעסע מאיסע

[sovay]

April is National Poetry Month. Today is Yom HaShoah. The poem below was published in 2005 as the epilogue to strange_selkie's A Verse from Babylon, her funny, brilliant, burning novel about the artists of the Vilna Ghetto, one of whom was her great-aunt. It is reprinted in my collection A Mayse-Bikhl, but I don't think I've ever put it online before. For memory.

Martyrology

We spoke in letters of fire, wrote in flame
dashed black and white as the interstices
of a scroll, crowned and fringed, the void
where all unspoken things gather, all lost
words remain: in smeared ink and dull
lead, on paper faded brown, acid, time's
kindling; the language of cold fingers
and bruised faces, iron rails and the stage
whose plays had only one ending. Ash
blows where words burned: a diaspora
of ghosts. Unwritten lyrics, music half
transcribed; a twist of rusted wire, papers
flaked like bone in the earth. Cobblestones
have forgotten our footsteps, the weight
of our bodies—mouths open to the earth,
eyes open to the sky. A blunted bullet;
a splintered lens. Chips in a brick wall.
The years grow over like grass. We kept
songs like prayers on the tongue, like
curses, the jargon of angels hymned
bitterly while we held each other fast:
hold us now. From lead and gold, we wrote
each other: from fire, sing us now again.

Whether you grew up on pictures of victimhood, or on stories of poets and partisans, this is an awesome set of photos.

Comments

[thistleingrey]

For memory. It would feel strange to say, "I love this," but I certainly love its density.

[sovay]

It would feel strange to say, "I love this," but I certainly love its density.

I will accept that. Thank you.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Ash
blows where words burned

For every atom of their ash, a blessing.

Thank you for this poem.

Nine

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

And for those pictures, which are beautiful.

Nine

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Yes, on all counts.

[sovay]

And for those pictures, which are beautiful.

I can only take credit for the poem, I think. But the other I wanted to share.

Thank you.

[margavriel.livejournal.com]

Powerful. Is there a reason that you write the title in Soviet Yiddish orthography?

[sovay]

Is there a reason that you write the title in Soviet Yiddish orthography?

מאיסע rather than מעשה? No, except that I didn't think about it until now. Corrections accepted if it looks chronologically stupid—strange_selkie, rose_lemberg?

I am glad the poem worked for you.

[margavriel.livejournal.com]

And עמעסע rather than אמת'ע. Up to you, of course.

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

Edited because I missed the boat and still don't have a font set at work to express myself in! Sorry! I have nothing to offer besides "Still Litvish, still looks okay to me."

The diaspora! Fun with spelling.

[margavriel.livejournal.com]

Huh? What did you write/edit?

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

Oh -- possibly only the journal owner sees pre-edited comments? Hm. Anyway, I was having a lack of close reading ability and thought you were disputing something besides the post title.

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

The poem is astounding. And the pictures are wonderful.
The music librarians' mailing list pointed out this documentary about Bronislaw Huberman, a violinist who saved many Jewish musicians by starting up a new orchestra in Palestine in the mid 1930s.

[sovay]

The music librarians' mailing list pointed out this documentary about Bronislaw Huberman, a violinist who saved many Jewish musicians by starting up a new orchestra in Palestine in the mid 1930s.

I had not heard that story. Wow.

Thank you.

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the compliments. I need to get the rights to that book back and e-publish the hell out of it. Or else check that the contract was for First North American... and e-publish the hell out of it.

The poem stands the test of time in a way I worry the book does not, but I love them both.

[sovay]

The poem stands the test of time in a way I worry the book does not, but I love them both.

The book stands the test of time. Fuck off, Tiny Whichever Shoulder Personage Keeps Saying That, Sutzkever, Are You Just Jealous You Didn't Get a Cameo?

Republish through a Jewish press! Or someone else we like and trust! Who will send out review copies! They must exist somewhere!

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

If it's Tiny Sutzkever, you may take him by the collar and drop him none too gently into an omnibus Di Goldene Keyt. And then close the book much harder than you usually would. We have no time around here for Tiny Misogynist Pain Olympians.

[sovay]

We have no time around here for Tiny Misogynist Pain Olympians.

There are things nobody needs on their shoulders, let alone in their heads.

(I would, actually, be totally all right with Tiny Hirsh Glik.)

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

Heee. He could have poetry slams with the Tiny War Poets' Collective that's sure to be out there somewhere.

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

Your poem really epitomizes the feeling I had at the Yiddish book center in Amherst, MA, looking through Yiddish plays and sheet music and knowing that I held something that was once vital and everyday which had accidentally become hallowed and fleeting.

Thank you for writing this and for sharing the glorious pictures. I am amazed that I've never seen those, given the depth of my high school age obsession with WWII primary sources, particularly about the holocaust.

May we all remember as clearly, and with as much depth, but perhaps more understanding in 50 years.

[sovay]

Your poem really epitomizes the feeling I had at the Yiddish book center in Amherst, MA, looking through Yiddish plays and sheet music and knowing that I held something that was once vital and everyday which had accidentally become hallowed and fleeting.

You should write a poem about that. It is such a strange process. Just the act of needing to be remembered confers such weight.

I am amazed that I've never seen those, given the depth of my high school age obsession with WWII primary sources, particularly about the holocaust.

I don't think I'd seen any of them. (I had read about the Jewish Brigade.) I don't know if they change the narrative of the Holocaust for me, because I did not grow up only with stories of victimhood, but they are stories I did not know and I am glad to glimpse them. I loved the commenter recognizing their grandfather in the photo of the man with the "Gift for Hitler." I want to know more about the woman with the radiant face; I hope the rest of her life was as charmed as that moment.

May we all remember as clearly, and with as much depth, but perhaps more understanding in 50 years.

Amen.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Thank you for sharing both the poem, which is lovely and I don't know if I've said so specifically or only in the "A Mayse-Bikhl is altogether lovely" sense of it, and the photos.

The memories for a blessing.

[sovay]

Thank you for sharing both the poem, which is lovely and I don't know if I've said so specifically or only in the "A Mayse-Bikhl is altogether lovely" sense of it, and the photos.

Thank you.

I have been writing for enough years now that I can start to feel weird about poems I had published five or ten years ago, but I think this one holds.

[ashlyme.livejournal.com]

Excellent novel, excellent poem. Thanks for sharing the photos, too.

[ashlyme.livejournal.com]

And respects, too, paid later than I would have liked.

[sovay]

Thanks for sharing the photos, too.

You are very welcome.

Thank you.

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

*pokes*
You silly people and my juvenilia.

Thank you.

[sovay]

You silly people and my juvenilia.

Get your own Wittgenstein. It is a good novel. Your juvenilia was the one that preceded it.

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

OH JESUS YOU WILL NEVER AGAIN MENTION THE THING. *stomps on its very binding* LOOK I WAS NINETEEN. SOME OF US DON'T HAVE A MUSE AT NINETEEN.

*backs away, gibbering in horror*

[sovay]

LOOK I WAS NINETEEN. SOME OF US DON'T HAVE A MUSE AT NINETEEN.

I TRUST MY POINT HAS BEEN MADE.

(Your muse at nineteen worked fine on the prose-level. It had some other problems. It does not anymore.)

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

>.>

Thank you. I feel it is much, much, much safer to accept the compliment than to dwell on the OH LOOK, ELVIS.