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ס'איז אן עמעסע מאיסע
April is National Poetry Month. Today is Yom HaShoah. The poem below was published in 2005 as the epilogue to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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.
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.
no subject
You are very welcome.
Thank you.