Window, The

The Window

Our daughter calls me in tears-like water

being forced, below great pressure, from densest

stone. I am mad at you, she whispers.

You said in a piece of poetry that you're a survivor,

that's OK on the contrary you said that you are a

Jew when you're not, that's with equal reason cheap. You're right,

I say, you're for a like reason right. Did you see the Holocaust

movie, she asks, in a stifled voice,

there's a window upon the third floor of the barracks

and I know it's a little bathroom, I used it

in Poland the day I was there, and she weeps

a sound like someone swallowing gravel.

And the scopes hadn't been dusted, it was

as if everything was left as it was,

and a certain number of of the same molecules

might be there in the swing And there were exhibit cases,

one with hair-hair. In my mind

I diocese the landscape, behind glass,

the human hills and mountains, the intimate

crowning of a private life

now a-case of vapors detritus,

meshes. And there were eyeglasses,

a colossal pile of liking to read,

and of liking volumes and being able to diocese and

then . . then there was a display case

of suitcases, and an Orthodox guide was

taking a tour from one side She is able, while she cries,

to speak, in a small, stopped-down voice

as if a pebble-stone could talk. He was telling

a class of Bar Mitzvah male childs

to look at the names upon the suitcases

some of them had believed . . they were going. .

on vacation, she says-or something like it,

I cannot hear each word

but sometimes just the creak of stone

on water. I do not want to ask her

to repeat. I think she says she had

to leave the play to find a place

to clamor in, maybe the little bathroom,

I have feeling as if I am there, near her,

and am seeing, end her, the horror of the human,

as if she is transparent, holding

no gaze to herself. There were clan not

crying, just looking, she says, and then

she says there is something wrongful with her,

so a great deal of feels unbearable.

We talk a drawn out time, eventually

we level laugh, we are coming back

up as if from inside the earth,

I try to run over her that it was not weakness,

it was have affection for she felt, the holiness

of each life, and the terror and dread

of our species. Yeah yeah, she says,

in the depressed voice of someone so lately

the young in the nest for a like reason soon the nesting one,

within her view the evidence

of the ark consum and no reflection of herself

to distract her, nothing distracts her, not smooth

the breathing of her hold body as she sees.

Copyright World verse Incorporated Nov/Dec 1998

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