Languages of Community: The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands (review)

Abstract

A Scroll of Contemporary Poems Helen Degen Cohen (bio), Norman Finkelstein (bio), Benjamin Friedlander (bio), Michael Heller (bio), Joseph Lease (bio), Bonnie Lyons (bio), Stephen Paul Miller (bio), Steven P. Schneider (bio), Daniel R. Schwarz (bio), Hugh Seidman (bio), William George Wallis (bio), and Linda Zisquit (bio) Helen Degen Cohen Habry* Habry, peaceful Polish flowers, Mine, yet I never belonged to that country. Fraying, breezing in the quietest quiet, Blue, all along the edge of the wheatfield, Silken blue, among orange poppies, And the sun is silent, silent as the night. How can so much sunlight sink so quietly? How can it be that no one is here? I, after all, have never left that countryside And not even the Poles are visible, and where Are the girls who forever wove garlands And ran through flowers as if they were air? I return to habry as if by candlelight, Warmed, though I know they are nowhere near, There is nothing like them in poor Illinois, No Jews-and-gentiles, nothing to separate Petal from petal—only hushed blue Habry, hovering in the air. * Actually, Chabry (cornflowers). Habry and the following poem, Ruda Felka, first appeared in a Polish translation by John Guzlowski in the Polish magazine Akcent. [End Page 74] Ruda Felka For my first nursemaid First, there is sun a room for three mother, father, child the sun finding its way in under billowing curtains and through it the entire world of light in building blocks and leafy patterns. First, there was sun. And mama, like the sun coming, going, brightly floating her burnished mother-hair whirling, then gone. Then thick darkness, stone dragging. Then his warm odor schnappsy breath, fragrant underarms. First there is the leaving of the peaceful sun, playful sun, only sun. The dark child is the world’s brilliant flower. Why be sorry for the darkness inside it? Like a black pearl. They don’t understand it. They would like to remove it their words like scissors and knives. Or display it, their peculiar jewel. I will not be cut. I am only a child. I will not freeze in a golden frame. I will get up and dance the Krakovianka. until they all close their eyes: Wreath of cornflowers and orange poppies [End Page 75] colored ribbons flying from my shoulderssleeves white white whitesequined bodice of black velvet— I will go to the park with looks like a goat Ruda Felka, who lets me touch the flowers Survivors My parents survived. I survived. My grandparents and aunts and uncles were taken up into the sky. I can see them floating up there, spending their eternity looking for me: age five in a tan little box felt hat and a smart little suit to match, all embroidered with red. A chubby child who loved the park. You remember? they smile. They are baking a babka for me in the sky, stuffing it with raisins and blueberries almonds and sugar; let her have everything, they say, the whole store, the whole country, the whole of our lives— if only we can find her. And so they keep on looking for me and for each other in the great white fog, in heaven. [End Page 76] Abraham An ice-cold restaurant amongst the high, heated rock of Jerusalem. Photos of the famous who eat here where the walls are one panoramic window on the crumbly Judean hills south, on the Citadel in the Old City east, all alight with gritty biblical rock. We order a coke on the rocks, noon, the place empty but for us. We’re dying of heat and the waiters are French. Encased in glass, we are surrounded by Abraham’s landscape. How could he have known this would be our fate? A man of honor with his big stick, angry, afraid, hot. So many hills to be surmounted, the desert burning like the eyes of God. One had to be wise here, not a seer, not one imagining a future of air-conditioned restaurants to cool the mind. How could he have prayed, with a cool body like ours? There he is, bending . . . lower, his spine weakening with age, sand...