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Gabriel Rosenstock
Statement:
My first poem, below, hardly needs an explanation. But when we think of Israel-Palestine, it's hard not to think back to the concentration camps. It was written in English. It was the English, of course, that carved up the Midle East, Ireland, and much of the world we know today.
The sun will be free
Passover in Dachau,
a twelve year old whispers to himself,
‘Next year in Jerusalem!’
Not sure anymore what next year means
or where Jerusalem might be from here -
Does it exist at all?
That it may be just another myth
is a thought he cannot carry for too long:
At the camp’s perimeter
the setting sun is caught in barbed wire
and struggles to go down.
He dreams of oranges,
so real they are, he wipes the non-existent juice
from his chin.
Well, if not next year then the year after
in a place where no dogs bark,
where folk wear different kinds of clothes
and shoes – and hats.
He’ll have a hat in the old city
and never take it off,
getting up in the morning
going to bed at night
it will be there, on his head.
He will move in a world of men,
speak Yiddish, learn Hebrew,
read newspapers, sip coffee,
smoke cheroots. Utter Oy, vey
loud and often to his heart’s content.
And he will eat oranges
spit out the pips
and if people look at him strangely
he will flash a smile –
his teeth will shine again
and the sun will be free to rise and set
next year in Jerusalem.
Comfort Lady: a veteran remembers
It was plain she had lost her reason
as I had lost my soul
One morning
the sun reddened over a roaring maze of trees.
How to know blood from dew?
I tore up all my haiku
For years afterwards
my mouth sagged
my wife said, You’ve had a stroke!
no, my eyes said, their whites curdled
Old pleasures yield nothing.
Calligraphy? The brush is not warm in my hand
Gardening?
More death
Than life in the soil.
The pageantry of seasons?
Crumbling stage scenery!
After the war
she leaped to her death
emitting an eagle’s whistling cry
fade out . . .
it's on film: I saw it on a history channel
roughly six seconds
was it you?
I write this down
so that my children and grandchildren and their children
will know of my sorrow
A leaf has just landed on the veranda
I pick it up, finger its veins
and half choke: time passes, a running sore.
I went to die for the Emperor
and lived. I am eaten by shame . . .
comfort lady, what was your name
A solution
The American flag on the moon is now completely bleached white. Professor Google can confirm this as factual. The photo was factual, not photo-shopped.
In Vedic philosophy, everything except the Supreme Reality is 'maya' (illusion), insubstantial, nothing, a dream. Incidentally, Maya was the name of Dileep's * late wife.
The poem expresses my anarchist philosophy that all flags and boundaries will one day disappear.
Gabriel Rosenstock 14.8.2014
* Dileep Jhaveri is one of the contribution poets with „autobiography of war“
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Bratacha Bána
Tá bratach Mheiriceá ar an ngealach iompaithe bán, tuartha ag an ngrian. Ní faic anois iad na réaltaí, na stríoca, brionglóid.
Lá breá gréine is beidh gach brat tréigthe
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White Flags The American flag on the moon has turned white, bleached by the sun. The stars and stripes are nothing now, a dream. Some sunny day all flags will go that way
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