Post Number:#14 
December 29th, 2012, 6:54 am
Note: Due to the formatting of this particular forum software, until someone else posts another poem here, I'm afraid this post will go endlessly. My apologies for the length; there is nothing I can do about it.
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Juliek's Violin by Michael Blumenthal
"Was it not dangerous to allow your vigilance to fail, even for a moment, when at any minute death could pounce on you? I was thinking of this when I heard the sound of a violin, in this dark shed, where the dead were heaped on the living. What madman could be playing the violin here, at the bring of his own grave? It must have been Juliek... The whole of his life was gliding on the strings: his lost hopes, his charred past, his extinguished future. He played as he would never play again." -- Elie Wiesel, Night
"Ahnest Du den Schopfer, Welt?" ("World, do you feel the Maker near?") -- Schiller, Ode To Joy
In the dank halls of Buchenwald,
a man is playing his life.
It is only a fragment from Beethoven--
soft, melodic, ephemeral as the sleep
of butterflies, or the nightmares of an infant,
but tonight it is his life.
In one hand, he holds the instrument,
resonant with potential. In the other,
the fate of the instrument: hairs
of a young horse strung between wood,
as the skin of a lampshade is strung between wood.
The bow glides over the strings, at first,
with the grace of a young girl brushing her hair.
Then, suddenly, Juliek leans forward
on his low stool. His knees begin to quiver,
and the damp chamber fills with a voice
like the voice of a nightingale.
Outside, the last sliver of light
weaves through the fence. A blackbird
preens its feathers on the lawn as if
to the music, and a young child watches
from the yard, naked and questioning.
But, like Schiller crying out
Ahnest Du den Schopfer, Welt,
Juliek plays on.
And the children,
as if in answer,
burn.
-- Updated Sat Dec 29, 2012 4:20 am to add the following --
The Substitute by Leslie Adrienne Miller
We knew only that she was too pretty
for 8th grade English, and that she'd had
a baby, but never a husband.
This gave us every right to moral outrage
and meanness. Somebody passed a note:
Nobody answer her, and we knew how
this worked, how the girls who swelled
a bit at the waist and took on that pale,
stricken look became invisible to us
soon after. Too pretty, too willing.
We wondered how the school could have missed
what we knew. This one with her great sheaf
of blonde hair bound in a silk scarf,
her hips and stomach returned to maiden
slimness did not fool us. We knew
the threads of story caught from the mouths
of mothers over the fence at the Country Club Pool,
whispers and glances when she came back
in the first bikini we'd seen on a woman,
and this only months after. No good, was all
my father said when I asked about the man
who left her. She was ours then,
for three weeks and a whole unit
of grammar. Simple choice: was/were,
she/her. We all looked out the window
at the mown hill, the adult world
driving down the afternoon; we traced
the hoops and lines of our games to keep
from looking into her eyes. Charlie
blew an obscene pink bubble, Shawn popped
her knuckles, and Kitty let go a whole
set of colored pencils. Somebody passing
in the hall squished their nose on the door
glass, and the substitute threw her hair
back over her shoulder like a heavy brocade.
Chester panted, Pete squirmed and banged
the locks of his spine down the chair back.
She couldn't go to the principal,
she couldn't single out the intractable ones,
so she huffed, rolled her blue queen's eyes,
and answered the questions herself,
looking out above us somewhere,
and taking the tail of hair back
into her hands again and again: lie/lay,
she/her, he/him, while the chalk dust
gathere in pilars of sunlight: ride/
rode/ridden-- We worked at our picture
of the man, swarthy, animal-eyed, possibly
astride a motorcycle, cruelly muscled, steaming
bare chest. Scum, I thought, as I snuck
peeks at her creamy skin, the svelte navy skirt
she couldn't have worn when it happened.
I drew horses on all my notebooks,
topping them with girls who filled
their hands with streaks of mane,
blissful, reckless, while the substitute
went on invoking correct pronouns,
agreeing verbs, and we/us, I/me
dismantled her, her breasts, her lover,
her speckled scarves and dainty feet,
whatever we could conceive of her sex,
and carried it away in doodles, reveries,
silence, to the great cache of our rich
and dangerous unknowing.
Like Deer Our Bodies by Wayne Dodd
All the way home the ground
Fog rises and swirls
Around us, snow turning to air
As we breath, as we drive
This familiar road
Back through February
Home. Houses, whole hillsides of
Trees bulk beside us, seen
Only in memory.
Like deer our bodies,
Silent together in secret
Grass, do not
Speak but dream
Still, beneath the hovering
Cold, of food
And ease among friends. Soon
Together we will sleep one more
Our separate lives. And when
Tomorrow at first light we
Wake, each
Branch and blade on
Peach Ridge Road will flash
New ice: fog
Remembered, fog saved.
-- Updated Sun Dec 30, 2012 5:34 pm to add the following --
Test.
No man is an island, but if you tie a bunch of dead guys together they make a pretty good raft.
