Silence is, of course,
Silence so when I ask
What's with the flute
You're carrying
She says
Nothing but points
To the small drum
She has strapped to her hip
Which I suppose
Wanted company.
Silence is, of course,
Silence so when I ask
What's with the flute
You're carrying
She says
Nothing but points
To the small drum
She has strapped to her hip
Which I suppose
Wanted company.
1918; Max reads Charles Reznikoff's poem
About the shopgirls leaving work
So the rats and roaches can begin their shifts
Reznikoff's family makes hats. Sometimes
Reznikoff sells them. Max makes coats.
On her day off, a shopgirl -- I see her
As tall and thin and talkative, moving
Rapidly or not at all -- could wear
A Reznikoff hat and a Max-made coat;
My other grandfather, Joe
Could make a watch for her. No;
It's 1918 and Joe is in the army. His father
Juda will have to make it and sell it
From his shop on a street that will disappear
Thirty years later to make an approach
To the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. Still
We in 1918 could care less; we're thinking
Of that tall shopgirl and wondering
What, if anything, she's wearing
Besides a coat and a hat and a watch.
I have sinned, Saint 467 --
Intercede for me and I
Will build for you an altar
Between those of Saint 394
Who once lent me ten dollars
And Saints 606 and 909
One of whom gave me a cat.
When there is one God, says Sobek,
Holding a beer in his thick-clawed hand,
It is His nature to fill everywhere,
To be everything. This leaves no room
For anyone else. Think how lonely that is!
You try to amuse Yourself; You invent Time
Hoping something will happen; nothing does
Until there is something else. Usually a dog.
Someday, though, a crocodile. Just wait
And see what sort of universe God will make
When He has a crocodile!
Perhaps God is a bit deaf so that
Ten men must talk together
To make Him hear and, even so,
He often misses some fine nuance
Or misunderstands us entirely.
Named angels last but
Nameless ones flicker
In and out of existence
So when God told
A nameless angel
With a long nose
And lank red hair
That He, due to His nature,
Was the only being able
To know both the location
And velocity of a particle
At the same time the poor thing
Had just time to say “Ah”
Before vanishing forever
My mother's stepmother Fanny
Did not, every witness agrees, love her
But kept her marriage bargain and
Taught the child all manner of things
Such as how to fold contour sheets
How to sew a dress from a pattern
How to buy meat, vegetables, fruit
How to bargain and not be cheated.
In the kitchen of her house her mother Jenny
Spent her days -- a woman so powerful
That I know many stories about her
And only two about her husband and both of them
Are mostly about Jenny anyway. She ruled the kitchen
But where her husband spent his days
Who knows? Perhaps to spite her daughter
Jenny was madly in love with my mother
And taught her that opals and peacock feathers
Bring bad luck and that a knife must never
Be given to a friend; demand something for it --
A penny will do -- or it will cut the friendship.
For nine hundred years
The blue vase has warned
In black Persian letters
That nothing lasts.
It looks water-tight;
If the museum allowed,
It could hold flowers.
The rare illness that was supposed
To finish off my mother's stepmother
Found her a very tough customer
So much so that one of her doctors
Meeting her in the street said
"Mrs. Lemport -- you're still alive?"