Yaakov Wolpe, Clark Zlotchew
Western Mist
Things of form have stitched Western lands
For these men, this what they dig, gold coins, it wriggles their grip –
Will they see all their wealth!?
They sit to rest just for some bits, for this what they do, it is numb
…And a single steam streams their lips
Only this, this vigorous mist, only this, this vigorous mist glues their dented spades!
Let them dig!
Yaakov Wolpe
.
Smoke and Mirrors
Hands all calloused and scarred,
Drooping moustache, reading glasses,
Aroma of tobacco and aftershave.
Cigar butt stuffed into pipe,
Hovering clouds of greyish smoke…
Grandpa.
.
He would bounce me on his knee
While bawling out a rhythmic tune
Hey! Tuli, tuli, tuli. Hey! Tuli, tuli…
.
When I grew older, he’d regale me
with stories of his travels, his adventures,
his life, in the Old Country.
.
He had traveled
In heat and in cold,
In rain and in snow,
Dusty trails and roads of mud,
Hauling sheets of fragile glass,
In horse-drawn wagon to jounce
Over bumps on the road,
Dodging pits in his path,
Along Ukraine’s plains, so vast,
To carve windows to see outward,
To shape mirrors to see inward.
.
Grandma spoke of courageous deeds
He was too modest to relate:
Fists and bottles and blood
To protect a young woman
From vodka-soaked beasts
Garbed in human clothing,
Wolves in sheepish wool.
Yet he was the kindest man I knew.
A hard-working man.
A great man.
A hero.
My Grandpa.
.
Years slid by, so fast, too fast,
Steel blades on slickety polished ice.
We talked, we chatted, ideas,
In Yiddish and in English,
Flowed from one to the other,
Streams combining into one deep pool.
Wars, nations, people, languages,
And even me.
He cared about
My work, my studies,
my adventures, my thoughts.
My life.
.
Damnable demon Dementia cast
its baleful mind-clouding shadow,
its filthy smothering shroud over him,
Concealing what made him him.
.
I traveled to shave his grizzled face,
Leaving his nicotine-stained moustache intact.
He no longer spoke to me
Or even uttered my name.
I wondered did he even know me.
I wondered but feared to know.
One day I took heart and asked,
“Do you know who I am?”
I held my breath, awaiting his answer.
His indignant response; “Of course,
You’re the boy who shaves me.”
.
The boy who shaves me!
.
I turned to gaze out the window
To conceal my moistened eyes.
The sky turned from bright blue to dark grey.
The air felt heavy, electrically charged.
A storm threatened.
Clark Zlotchew
The poet dedicates his work to his brother, his oldest sibling – his (parents) bochur, Reb Yonasan h’ Levi
‘’For he stood beside when I entered the earth, and never has his shadow been apart”
