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Miriam Chaikin lives in New York and makes long visits to Israel. The poems reproduced here
appeared in The Neovictorian/ Cochlea.
Contents
On Reading the Poems of Paul Celan Dance of the Yud Invisible Walker song of the
branch Night of the Equinox Friday Night
ON READING THE POEMS OF PAUL CELAN
Poetry Journal
in hand, eager to enter
its pages, I lie down
on my day bed
punch a pillow
to double it
under my head
and begin to read
The poet
steps out of the page
sweeps me up in his breath
makes me him, and though
I don't know
what they mean to him
when I read the words,
more than the dove
more than the mulberry
it's me that autumn loves,
I sit up
and begin to cry.
________________
DANCE OF THE YUD
Taking a cue
from the Creator
an amber flame
too long alone
in the dark
grows frolicsome
leaps up
and
now rising, now falling,
forms a vav
a dalet
a pey
makes an aleph
a tzaddi, makes hey
and
giddy with delight
dances into existence
twenty-one
companions for itself.
[Note: the yud (yod) is the smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet, sometimes seen as a "point."]
_____________________________
INVISIBLE WALKER
When I am far from Jerusalem
and grow nostalgic, I am able,
in my mind's eye,
to accompany myself
on a bodiless stroll
through the city, to open
the garden gate and go,
eyeless, yet seeing, down
leafy Kaf Tet Street,
passing
on my shoulderless right,
Pepper Tree Jacaranda
Eucalyptus rosemary bush,
descend
three earthen steps
to alley, link
to Valley of Ghosts Street
and there
wend my invisible way
past chocolate shop, patisserie,
cafe, cafe, flower stall, book store,
Bedouin woman seated
on sidewalk selling scallions
from a box,
and arrive finally at iron blue fence
where street and stroll end, and
my seeing eye blinks me back to:
sleeve hand pen these words.
___________________________
song of the branch
(remembering paul celan)
on the hill, spreading gladness, the mulberry sang along with the wind. one day, men of the place
came with intentions, ripped its limbs from the tree, piled them up and burned them. the fire
hissed and crackled. a lone branch rolled out from under and glanced about the ash, looking for
others of its kind. finding no one, it let lapse the search. but the impulse to sing clung, held fast.
so it went back to the hill of ashes, to the scorched stump, and, leaning against the old host,
waited for the wind to come with its song, that it might sing along. the wind came and, finding no
tree to sing with, passed in silence
____________________
NIGHT OF THE EQUINOX
this morning
i did not slide
under the quilt
to hide from
the riotous chirps
of yellow-bellied bul-buls
in cypress trees
paying homage
to the rising sun.
instead ,
eyes closed
i listened, and,
listening, lift up,
shed my skin
and fly
into the mouth
of the sound,
where i hasten
toward
a lighted presence
up ahead.
______________
FRIDAY NIGHT
Seated
in my green chair
in New York
I look up
from my book
think,
Jerusalem
and a map
falls open
on the table
of my mind
showing
night
lower itself
over a city
grown silent
as an
Aleph
in slippered feet
hastens
with velvet purse
over
cobbled stones
through
crooked streets
to rendezvous
with three stars.
___________________
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