by Daniel Kraft
Along the river Wisła, underneath
the castle, I would ride my heavy bike
and try to let the nothing in my heart
speak with the nothings that are God and Kazimierz.
Three nothings joined together on the riverside
and in their joinings each
grew to be less than it had been alone.
Something broke apart–
I thought it was the sky until I found it in me, and I fell
into visions of God like someone stumbling from a cliff
and never striking earth. The word of the LORD
came down like a plague of moths.
So many moths I could see nothing else, glowing as if
their wings burned. I saw dead children,
children dead and killed, including some among the murdered children
whose reincarnations I’ve come to know I am.
I saw and was given to know so many things
which I can’t find a single way to say.
One of the girls is four years old
and overwhelmed with terror.
Her spirit looks like a potato, wet,
rotting a little, with its skin peeled off–
forgive the flippancy of the image,
I have no words for this.
She is sad and angry far beyond her skill with speech.
In 1939 she had a vision of her murder and knelt
beside her parents as they tried and failed to comfort her.
She saw their murders too, and I have seen
her seeing this, I see her sometimes still.
Since 1941 she’s not been touched,
she cannot be made whole.
Sometimes I think I might, the next time she appears,
invite her into my body,
but I am too afraid.
Maybe to her I am the spirit and
she wonders what I need.
I was not told to eat a scroll.
I saw the children, some of whom I am.
The word became a thousand eyes on fire and I threw myself
onto the ground because the eyes became a river
flowing towards me, how they whirled
and quivered like a school of fish,
but a voice said, “mortal, stand,
and I will speak to you.” I stood.
The voice said, “mortal, let your mouth open,
and eat what I am giving you.” My jaw unhinged,
I heard it crack and open more. I saw a great hand,
wider than the river Wisła, and it held
my great-grandmother’s naked corpse,
my great-grandmother whom I never met in life.
Her body was tattooed entirely with Hebrew dirges,
gorgeous grief-struck poetry, none of which I recall.
Hebrew letters were tattooed over each millimeter of her skin,
so densely that they overlapped into chaotic traceries.
She was and was not legible to me.
The hand delivered her into my mouth.
I tasted her dry skin like leather, dirt, formaldehyde, and meat
and woke with strangers crouched
above me on that river walk’s pavement, murmuring, one talking on a phone
beneath the shadow of the castle.
A kind nun held my clammy hand. The word was gone.
I don’t know if I ate that body, as the voice told me to do.
Or did I only taste her, and return here, to wherever this is that we are?
::
Daniel Kraft is a writer, translator, and educator living in Richmond, Virginia. He works as the program manager for Yetzirah, a literary non-profit dedicated to supporting Jewish poets and Jewish poetry. His poems, essays, and translations of Yiddish and Hebrew appear in many publications; more information is available at www.danieljkraft.com.
Image: Nina Grębowska
ID: Misty river at sunrise.
Psaltery & Lyre 