Elegiac Prayers for Rosalind
Poem 1
Education did not come easily.
It was dearly bought and secretly spread
by ghetto ancestors,
the ancient Hebrew alphabet sewn into
trouser turn-ups by the local tailor.
Miraculously, the patriarchs who escaped to foreign
lands,
understood that learning was a fundamental tool
for survival and progress and individual growth
for each and every man, woman and child.
So Rosalind was given an education with the best.
Tragically and ironically, the candle of civilization
and culture which she lit
was snuffed out by the very darkness of barbarism
and ignorance she sought to light.
Poem 2
Music was her passion.
She played the piano and sang
with perfect pitch, quite unselfconsciously.
It was something they were required to do from
childhood
on the farm and in the village
to entertain guests, family and friends.
As a dutiful daughter, she accompanied her father
on the piano which he sang, in raucous baritone,
the ‘pop’ songs of the age –
“Only a rose I give you….
Blushing as roses do……..”
“Oh! Rosemarie I love you!
I’m always dreaming of you…”
After her death, we found the old sheet music
stacked
in cupboards and piano stools.
Poem 8
Somebody once said “She has fire in her eyes!”
She was a handsome woman.
The youthful photos show a young matron,
fashionably dressed, dark brown lustrous hair
plaited and wound round her head.
Slim and petite walking down Adderley Street
in the post-war severe dark dress with white Peter
Pan collar,
padded shoulders, platform shoes.
Her pantyhose weren’t even torn when they found
her.
Poem 11
On her 80th birthday, we got
all dressed up and celebrated at a
restaurant on the banks of the Liesbeeck River,
an historical spot, amid old oak and poplar trees.
It was almost doubly disastrous!
Our sister found an intruder in the bathroom
that day, fell as she escaped attack
and bravely concealed her bruises
under a long-sleeved dress.
Maman, rushing down the broadly-spaced wooden
steps of the restaurant to greet the guests,
tripped and fell heavily.
But they both recovered and we
partied in the smug belief that many
birthdays were to follow.
Poem 26
But the trickster was at work!
They found a loaf of bread on the front doorstep
the day she was attacked.
Perhaps it was that last good deed which ended
her life.
They pushed their way in.
She resisted the attack,
so they savaged her,
fiercely, brutally, violently and aggressively.
They pulverized her face, beat her head with
their fists,
strangled her, tied her hands with the cord from
the lamp
and took her right there on the Persian carpet.
Poem 27
The nightmare and the pain had only just begun.
Maman was transformed into a ghoul,
quite unrecognizable even by her own flesh and
blood.
Her face was swollen to five times the size,
the matted grey hair untidy on the pillow,
the mouth battered and beaten like an old crone,
the left ear black with bruising,
breathing laboured,
her throat puffed out and misshapen as though
from a goitre.
Her eyes were tightly closed
and she drifted in and out of consciousness.
There was a stench of things rotten and putrid
And the leering skull of Death
over the hospital bed.
Poem 28
For 12 days she lived in a twilight zone.
It was like the screen-saver of a computer.
We waited expectantly for the click of the mouse,
bringing the programme of light and consciousness
back to the screen.
On the 13th day when the swelling had come down,
They did a scan and discovered she’d had a series of
strokes at the time of the attack.
By that night she was dead,
without justice or retribution,
just stone-cold dead by cold-blooded murder.
It was a cruel caricature of the husband’s tender
care.
Now she was the withered bride of a savage Death
Poem 29
It is the obligation of the living to
recite the prayer for the dead
on the anniversary of our parent’s death, for one
generation,
until the day we die,
and then the obligation ends.
“O-seh sha-lom bim’-‘ro-mav, hu ya-a-she sha-lom,
a le-nuh v’al kol yis-ra-el v’im-ru Amen.”
“May the One who causes peace to reign in the
high heavens,
let peace descend on us, on all Israel, and all
the world,
and let us say: Amen.”
Pamela Heller-Stern
When dictators enslave their own and force their ideas upon other people,
Those oppressed must rise up and fight for their freedom against the dictators. (1)
They say that war is a holy cause? I say war causes people to be holy (2)
He who says what is not, goes to hell;
He, also, who having done a thing, says I have not done it. (3)
Hell is a place, a time, a consciousness, in which there is no love. (4)
There are a few things certain since Social Progress began:
The Dog returns to his vomit, and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire. (5)
Despair is not weak; it is strong. It fights against our hope,
Our determination and our hearts conviction-like. (6)
Hope is the thing with feathers that perches on the soul,
And sings the tune without the words and never stops at all. (7)
Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o’er my head. (8)
No remedy for black hate? Who says? Just love and love more, that’s all. (9)
Let such pure hate still underprop our love… (10)
I have no time to hate, because the grave would hinder me,
And life is not so ample I could finish enmity. (11)
Good we must love, and must hate ill, for ill is ill, and good, good still (12)
And the night shall be filled with music, and the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs, and silently steal away. (13)
To see the world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour. (14)
Canst though, O cruel! Say I love thee not
When I against myself with thee partake? (15)
Rodney Mazinter
(Poets: 1 – Friedrich Kellner; 2 – Friedrich Nietzsche; 3 – Lord Buddha; 4 – Richard Bach; 5 – Rudyard Kipling; 6 – Sri Chinmoy; 7 – Emily Dickinson; 8 – John Keats; 9 – Sri Chinmoy; 10 – Henry David Thoreau; 11 – Emily Dickinson; 12 – John Donne; 13 – Henry Longfellow; 14 – William Blake; 15 – William Shakespeare)
David and Goliath
The world stood by
Blind again …
And unkind
The only tiny democracy in the Middle East
Fought and still fights on behalf of humanity
Against superstition, ignorance and stupidity
An example to the world
Holding their hand out for peace and stability
They continue to protect themselves
And the uncivil civilized world
Remember how often
Israel has stood completely alone
To fight this infliction?
Now civilization stands alone
With their chances gone
Not knowing how
And where and when
To protect themselves
From the scourge of Islamic terror
And Israel still fights
For itself
And them
Charlotte Cohen
NOTES
- The “29 Elegiac Prayers for Rosalind”, a selection of which are published hereunder, were written in memory of my mother, Rosalind, who was attacked and left for dead in her own elegant apartment in Claremont, Cape Town at the age of 83. She died of her injuries 13 days later.
- This poem is in the form of a CENTO – a literary work made up of quotations from other works.It is composed of verses or passages taken from other authors, disposed in a new form or order. The cento originated in the 3rd or 4th century.
