Archive
Keeping Things Real
after Mark Strand
In a field
I’m not one of
the cows.
This is
always the case.
For all x not equal to me
I am not x.
When I walk
I don’t stay still
and always
the air moves in
since gas is
compressible.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I’ve been
kicked out by my girlfriend.
Zackary Sholem Berger (website) is a Baltimore-based poet and translator writing in Yiddish and English. His first book of poetry came out in 2011. Titled Not in the Same Breath, it’s 1/3 Yiddish, 1/3 English, and 2/3 pretty pictures, and can be purchased here.
The Key of Joy
by Caitlin M. Daphtary (music), Zackary Sholem Berger (lyrics), and Rachel Dudley (vocals)
To listen to today’s podcast while browsing the sheet music, either click on the document to view at full-screen size, or go straight to its location at Issuu.com.
Caitie Daphtary is a composer and award-winning amateur chef living in the Boston area. She has come to feel, particularly through her struggle with fibromyalgia, that her life (and all life) is a spiritual exercise, in which the question of “What am I not?” has particular relevance. In accordance, her music has taken a turn toward the simple and devotional — coming into being only when it is asked of her. “The Key of Joy” was composed in this fashion for her life-long friend Rachel Dudley upon her marriage. Currently she is working as a Director of Religious Education within the Unitarian Universalist Church and is just as eager as anyone to discover the next “hat she’ll wear.”
Zackary Sholem Berger (website) is a poet and translator living in Baltimore who writes in Yiddish and English. The words to The Key of Joy were written by Zack as a thank you to Sam Zerin and Rachel Dudley, who supported the publication of his poetry chapbook Not in the Same Breath (a happily conflicted volume which is 1/3 English, 1/3 Yiddish, and 2/3 pretty pictures, and can be purchased here). Caitie wrote the music, and the whole was premiered at Sam and Rachel’s wedding.
The Stick
Chief complaint: fever. History of present illness: 49-year-old HIV-positive African-American woman, tested HIV-positive five years previously to admission, currently undomiciled. Presented to the psychiatric emergency department at admission with delirium and fevers and was then transferred to Adult Emergency Services. Physical findings on arrival on the Medicine service: fever to 102F, tachycardia, tachypnea, hypotension, crackles about halfway up the lungs bilaterally, and oxygen saturation of 89%. Blood cultures and arterial blood gases were drawn.
When you finally got blood from the hard stick
You spotted the backflash of red
And said Thank God. The woman’s legs and arms
Were everywhere, and you were in the middle
Holding her down with one hand while wielding
A butterfly in the other. You stuck her and she bled.
You thank the Rock of Moses that she bled
And not you. Moses took a stick
To strike the rock, unwilling
To try his luck with more persuasion. God read
This as rebellion. Here the test of mettle
Is not getting stuck. Fuck! you cry, and hold her arms
Again. Can she please quit moving her arms?
She’s used and used. Most of her life she’s bled
High, or been sick, or in the middle
Of other people’s lives. Now she’s screaming. Stick
It out or shut up, you could say. It’s for your own good. Red
Is what you want from her. Would you help us? Are you willing?
You promise her a Snickers and she’s willing.
Her drugs are stamped on her arms.
Her lips and nails are painted careful red.
Her AIDS showed on a blot of what she bled.
Moses lashed out with his stick
When he wasn’t out front, but in the middle.
But that wasn’t what you were thinking in the middle
Of multiple stabbings and wheedlings.
You’ll send the labs. You’ll treat. Will it stick?
Is Bellevue just another scar on her arm?
I’m sorry if you want suspense: you stuck, she bled,
She shrieked and thrashed, the gauze turned red.
Moses, stick in hand, didn’t know he erred
Till God denied him. Force: it feels like meddling
To those on divine peaks away from blood.
But we down here see in the scars and whealing
Proof indirect that what we teach our arms
Is strength, not just intention. A stick
Read as a resting staff is idle; wielded
With strong arms is a try at mettle.
We bled her to cure. She was a hard stick.
Zackary Sholem Berger (website) is a Baltimore-based poet and translator writing in Yiddish and English. His first book of poetry came out in 2011. Titled Not in the Same Breath, it’s 1/3 Yiddish, 1/3 English, and 2/3 pretty pictures, and can be purchased here.
from Ode to the Dove by Avrom Sutzkever
translated by Zackary Sholem Berger
אָדע צו דער טויב
(פּאָעמע אין צען טיילן)
אברהם סוצקעווער
1954
III
בלעטל פּאַפּיר, ביסט אַ דענקמאָל, אַ נעסט בויט די טויב אין דײַן חומר,
בלעטל, אין דיר, ניט אין מאַרמאָר, איז אייביק דאָס פּנים פֿון טרוימער,
דאָ, צווישן אָפּקלאַנגען רויע, פֿאַרזונקענע, ליימענע פֿאָרמען,
זאַמל איך זילבערנע זילבן, צו קענען מײַן טײַבעלע קאָרמען.
זונפֿאַרגאַנג זינגט אין אַ לעמפּל. און אונטערן מאַגישן לעמפּל
בוי איך פֿון ביינערנע קלאַנגען, באַגאָסן מיט בלוט מײַנס – אַ טעמפּל.
ע ר האָט דאָס וואָרט ניט דערזונגען, אַזוי איז דאָס וואָרט ניט-דערשליפֿן!
גליט דער וווּלקאַן פֿון פּאָעזיע פֿאַרזיגלט אין בראָנזענע טיפֿן.
דאָ, מיט דער פּען, דיריזשיר איך אַן אייגענע, שטילע קאַפּעליע:
קומען אין רעגן נשמות און טריפֿן אַרײַן דורך דער סטעליע.
קאַרשן, פֿאַרמויערט אין ביימער, באַפֿעל איך צו בײַטן די ערטער,
קומען אויף פּורפּורנע פֿיסלעך צו לעבן ווי קאַרשן אין ווערטער.
ווײַזט זיך אין טעמפּל אַ וואָרעם, אַזאַ צויבערײַ איז אים פֿרעמדלעך.
אמתע קאַרשן אין ווערטער צעראַצן זײַן גומען ווי זעמדלעך.
וואָרקעט די טויב ווי אַ שוועסטער: באַפֿעל, זאָלן קומען די קאַרשן,
ד ו ביסט דער מאָס און דער מעסטער, פֿאַרשוווּנדענע זעונגען ירשן
Ode to the Dove
(poem in ten parts)
by Avrom Sutzkever
1954
III
Dove builds a nest in your substance, paper: you are a memorial.
Paper, in you, not in marble, the face of the dreamer’s immortal,
Here, among the raw echoes, among the sunken clay forms
I collect silvery syllables to bring to my dear dove and feed her.
Sunset is in a lamp singing. Under that magical lamp
I’m building with bonesounds, watered with my blood — a temple.
He hasn’t yet sung the last word! So the last word’s not sharpened yet.
Under seal, the volcano of poetry glows in bronze depths.
Here with this pen I’m conducting my own quiet band:
They’re dripping down in through the ceiling: souls in the rain.
Change places! I order the cherries walled up in the trees.
Purple legs rise up to live in the words like the cherries.
In the temple a worm now. To him such enchantment is foreign.
Genuine cherries in words are scratching his palate like sandgrains.
Sisterly coos the dove: Make cherries come, give the order!
You are the measure and measurer, of all vanished visions the heir!
Avrom Sutzkever (Wikipedia entry) was the greatest Jewish poet of his time. He spent his childhood in Siberia and emerged as a writer in the youthful literary flowering of Jewish Vilna. As poet and Jew in the Vilna Ghetto, he was transformed into a living remnant of a people’s near death, writing immortal works and helping to conceal Jewish cultural treasures for later rescue. After the war, he became a prophetic symbol and a cultural-historical institution, founding Yiddish literature’s greatest journal in Israel. A committed Zionist, he earned his country’s highest literary honor even as its powerful never abandoned their suspicion of Yiddish literary creativity. He died in 2010.
Zackary Sholem Berger (English blog, Yiddish blog) is a poet and translator in Baltimore who writes in Yiddish and English. His bilingual Yiddish and English book of poetry, Not in the Same Breath/Zog Khotsh Lehavdl, will be published in 2011. He and his wife, Celeste Sollod, are the forces behind Yiddish House LLC, which publishes Yiddish translations of classic English-language children’s books.
זענעפט (Zeneft)
That’s not how the word is pronounced, I hissed.
But the damage was done:
You tore the tongue out from every martyr
because you could not say the word for mustard
I taught you a week ago.
Torturing them over again
when we tell jokes about old men and fish
or different words for penis.
Am I wholly serious here? I’m not
serious enough. Reread the page.
Learn my name in the language
I want to speak. Silence
is the deadest tongue.
Zackary Sholem Berger (English blog, Yiddish blog) is a poet and translator in Baltimore who writes in Yiddish and English. His bilingual Yiddish and English book of poetry, Not in the Same Breath/Zog Khotsh Lehavdl, will be published in 2011. He and his wife, Celeste Sollod, are the forces behind Yiddish House LLC, which publishes Yiddish translations of classic English-language children’s books.
qarrtsiluni 