a poem from the book

My People Speak

The gallery of my forebears, my people:

men in velvet and silk,
long pale faces,
lips that indicate a weary sensuality,
delicate hands that rest caressingly
on grand old folios—
late in the night they talk to God.

Merchants from Leipzig, Danzig,
their fine white cuffs, the smell of expensive cigars,
the scholarly wit of men
who’ve grown up pondering the Talmud.
With fine manners, speaking perfect German,
they’ve the dull sly eyes of businessmen,
cunning, successful, sated.
Don Juans, salesmen, mystics,

a drunk, a pair of apostates in Kiev
submissively kissing the cross.

My people:

women set with gems like pagan idols,
diamonds starry against the red night
of Turkish shawls,
in heavy lustrous folds of French satin
their bodies are lithe, svelte
as a weeping willow’s long hanging branches;
hands in their laps like an arrangement
of dried flowers. Extinguished desire,
drab and overshadowed in their lovely dead eyes.

Grandes dames in calico and linen,
big-boned, strong, athletic,
with easy, scornful laughter,
calm speech and eerie silences.
I see them at night, through the windows of my cottage
unexpectedly erected, like statues.
In the twilight of their eyes flickers
cruel delight.

And then, there are a few,
I say it with shame, who sold themselves
for a few rubles.

They’re all my people, blood of my blood,
the flame from which my own was kindled,
all of them mine, living and dead,
sad, grotesque, and noble,
stampeding through me
as through a lightless,
a haunted house,
banging and praying and cursing and weeping,
making my heart thud
like a great knelling bell of flesh,
my mouth falls open,
my tongue flutters,
the voice isn’t mine—
my people speak.