I’m a big fan of Rachel Barenblat, the Velveteen Rabbi. In February, I had a piece up from her 70 Faces: Torah Poems. (You can buy it through the publisher or through Amazon). The poems are tied to the weekly parashot (Torah readings) from the five books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

I’m a week late with this one; in the Torah cycle, we’re just starting Numbers this week and the poem below is tied to the last parasha from Leviticus. But it’s one of my favorites, so here it is.

Either/Or (Bechukotai)

If you will follow my laws,
and obey my commandments
I will grant you rain in its season
you will eat your fill
I will live in your midst

I can be infinitely more hostile
than you, but I won’t be.
In the end you’ll realize
I was here all along,
waiting for you.

Not posting much at the moment, as I have a bad flu. But did want to offer up this poem (once again, suggested by Jendi Reiter), touching on a familiar theme here. This Robin Leslie Jacobson piece (which appeared in Parabola Magazine) is heartbreaking.

Daughter

Anorexia leaves you
her cello, luminous, leaning
in the corner by the piano;

Lights out,
you wait up.

I’ve liked a lot of James Merrill, but I didn’t know this one until my mother sent it to me last month. I’ve lived a lot of places in my life (since moving away to go to college, more than a dozen houses and apartments). I’ve had a half-dozen roommates who weren’t lovers, as well as living with four wives and three or four other girlfriends, whose tastes ranged from Viennese rococo to Miami minimalist. My own decorating has been haphazard to the eyes of most, but, I’d like to think, still “me.”

Merrill, as he usually does, finds the grand emotion in the small things.

The Candid Decorator

I thought I would do over
All of it. I was tired
Of scars and stains, of bleared
Panes, tinge of the liver.
The fuchsia in the center
Looked positively weird
I felt it—dry as paper.
I called a decorator.
In next to no time such
A nice young man appeared.
What had I in mind?
Oh, lots and lots of things—
Fresh colors, pinks and whites
That one would want to touch;
The windows redesigned;
The plant thrown out in favor,
Say, of a small tree,
An orange or a pear . . .
He listened dreamily.
Combing his golden hair
He measured with one glance
The distance I had come
To reach this point. And then
He put away his comb
He said: “Extravagance!
Suppose it could be done.
You’d have to give me carte
Blanche and an untold sum.
But to be frank, my dear,
Living here quite alone
(Oh I have seen it, true,
But me you needn’t fear)
You’ve one thing to the good:
While not exactly smart,
Your wee place, on the whole
It couldn’t be more ‘you.’
Still, if you like—” I could
Not speak. He had seen my soul,
Had said what I dreaded to hear.
Ending the interview
I rose, blindly. I swept
To show him to the door,
And knelt, when he had left,
By my Grand Rapids chair,
And wept until I laughed
And laughed until I wept.

The Anglo-American poet Linda Chase has died, age 69. I’ve liked quite a bit of her stuff, this playfully erotic one in particular.

Young Men Dancing

Who were those young men dancing?
And why were they dancing with you?
And what was the meaning of all that business
around the area of the pelvis, both pelvises,
I mean, since I saw you with two of them–
two men, that is, with one pelvis each.
Though there is your pelvis too, to reckon with.
It made quite a show of itself out there
on the dance floor. Not to be overlooked
nor slighted in any way, sticking like a magnet
to the erratic rhythms of those young men,
their jeans curving and cupping and making
promises in all directions of things to come.

Could they feel your nipples harden?
Did they know what must have happened
as your thighs began to stick together, throbbing
to the music? Thank God there was the music
you could hide behind and make it look like dancing.
I’m wondering just how much attention
young men pay.

Like many, I first discovered Wislawa Szymborska when she won the 1996 Nobel Prize for Literature. This ran again this week in the online edition of the New York Review of Books. I don’t love cats, but this is very fine.

Cat in an Empty Apartment

Die—you can’t do that to a cat.
Since what can a cat do
in an empty apartment?
Climb the walls?
Rub up against the furniture?
Nothing seems different here
but nothing is the same.
Nothing’s been moved
but there’s more space.
And at nighttime no lamps are lit.

Just wait till he turns up,
just let him show his face.
Will he ever get a lesson
on what not to do to a cat.
Sidle toward him
as if unwilling
and ever so slow
on visibly offended paws,
and no leaps or squeals at least to start.

Maundy Thursday services are my favorite in the Anglican liturgical year. I’m a fan of footwashing (both giving and receiving). And on this Holy Thursday eve as we remember the Last Supper, this classic by Wilfred Owen (who did write about topics other than war) is worth sharing. And yes, we worship best when we touch, with lips or hands, the living.

Maundy Thursday

Between the brown hands of a server-lad
The silver cross was offered to be kissed.
The men came up, lugubrious, but not sad,
And knelt reluctantly, half-prejudiced.
(And kissing, kissed the emblem of a creed.)
Then mourning women knelt; meek mouths they had,
(And kissed the Body of the Christ indeed.)
Young children came, with eager lips and glad.
(These kissed a silver doll, immensely bright.)
Then I, too, knelt before that acolyte.
Above the crucifix I bent my head:
The Christ was thin, and cold, and very dead:
And yet I bowed, yea, kissed – my lips did cling.
(I kissed the warm live hand that held the thing.)

Edward Hirsch isn’t just one of our greatest living American poets, he’s a zealous advocate for poetry. I first heard him read aloud at a celebration for Czeslaw Milosz at Claremont in 1998 (where I got to shake the great Nobel Laureate’s hand.) This seems right as we head towards spring break, towards Passover, and towards Easter morning.

Happiness Writes White

I am a piece of chalk
scrawling words on an empty blackboard.

My head is like skylight.
My heart is like dawn.

I have certain poets I return to again and again for comfort and inspiration: Jeffers, of course, my favorite of all; Auden and Yeats. But high on that list is the great Denise Levertov, and I’m surprised that in nearly seven years of weekly short poems, I’ve never had this famous one of hers.

The ache of marriage:

thigh and tongue, beloved,
are heavy with it,
it throbs in the teeth

two by two in the ark of
the ache of it.

Alice Notley is an award-winning poet from the California desert. Read this gorgeous one aloud.

I the people

I the people
to the things that are were &
come to be.
We were once what we know
when we
make love When we go away
from each other because
we have been created
at 10th & A, in winter &
of trees & of the history of houses
we hope we are
notes of the musical scale of
heaven—I the
people so repetitious, & my
vision of
to hold the neighbors loose-
ly here in
light of gel, my gel, my vision
come out of
my eyes to hold you sur-
round you in
gold & you don’t know it
ever. Everyone
we the people having our
vision of
gold & silver & silken liquid
light flowed
from our eyes & caressing
all around all the
walls. I am a late Pre-
in this dawn of
We the people
to the things that are & were
& come to be
Once what we knew was only
and numbers became
It is numbers & gold & at 10th
& A you don’t
have to know it ever. Opening
words that show
Opening words that show that we
were once
the first to recognize
the immortality of numbered
bodies. And we are the masters
of hearing & saying
at the double edge of body &
breath
We the lovers & the eyes
All over, inside her
when the wedding
is over, & the Park “lies cold &
lifeless”
I the people, whatever is said
by the first
one along, Angel-Agate. I wear
your colors
I hear what we say & what
we say . . . (and I
the people am still parted in
two & would cry)

I am by nature an optimist, so Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s poem (which recently ran in the Guardian) is just perfect for the first brief offering of spring.

Optimistic Little Poem

Now and then it happens
that somebody shouts for help
and somebody else jumps in at once
and absolutely gratis.

A splendid sight.