The Poem Is A Catalogue
The Poem is a Catalogue
The Poem is a Catalogue
A Long List
Of all things seen and known
All one’s memories
All the times and loves one has had
The great story of many other lives.
The Poem is a Catalogue of a Continent
Of a new world seen through fresh eyes
It is the night of all Rabelais body- functions
And Whitman’s wanderings
And Borges literary labyrinths
Of Joyce’s English language styles
Oxen of the Sun.
The Poem is a Catalogue of all the people
One has known
Their names and faces and lives
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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At My Aunt's Unveiling
AT MY AUNT’S UNVEILING
At my aunt’s unveiling
There were five of us
Only five
One was a woman
A friend of hers
Not the closest one
But someone who knew her
And wanted to be a friend.
Thousands of people had known my aunt
Hundreds had worked with or for her
She was born into a large family
But all of them were gone
Or out of it.
My sister and I were the relatives
My aunt had been very generous to us
And difficult for my sister
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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And If An Old Man Dies
AND IF AN OLD MAN DIES
(Yet another reflection on Koheleth)
And if an old man dies
And leaves behind him nothing-
And if an old man dies and leaves behind
Much family and wealth
And friends who remember him-
And if an old man dies
And leaves behind him
A reverenced work
Esteemed through many generations-
And if an old man dies
With a name mankind wishes to take with it to its own grave-
And if an old man dies
And nothing survives of humanity
And all his works and wishes
Bound up with the being of others
Who earthbound will die with the Earth
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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I Listened To The Learned Cosmologist
I LISTENED TO THE LEARNED COSMOLOGIST
I listened to the learned cosmologist
Explain how we are not really the center of anything-
Not Space not Time not even our own special creation on earth-
I listened to the learned cosmologist
Tell us we live in an obscure corner of the Galaxy
Just one small circling clod of a humdrum sun -
I listened to him tell us we should learn to be humble
For we are not the leader or the ruler or the purpose
Of the world.
I listened to the learned cosmologist
And I wondered why the love of a few on this earth
Makes me feel there is home and happiness
Special blessing in my life -
I wondered why what will be at the end of the end of the end
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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What Of The Person Remains?
WHAT OF THE PERSON REMAINS?
What of the person remains?
For tens of thousands of years
Not even a bone.
For a few thousand
For a few a name and a story,
And for most, dust and nothingness.
But then
Portrait and family history
Photographs and then films
Clips of a life.
And now more and more detail
Everyman immortalized in each tweet and twitter
Eternity in an electronic file.
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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They Say The Universe Will Expand So Fast
THEY SAY THE UNIVERSE WILL EXPAND SO FAST
They say the Universe will expand so fast
That no place will remain in touch with anyplace else
They say the universe will explode on itself
And leave us in another universe- parallel to this
They say the universe began so long ago
It has not begun
They say there is no universe- but a multiverse
They say the multiverse which we a part of
Has more than one tomorrow
And that where we are going
Is such a surprise
That we cannot possibly even begin to guess at it
They say the future
Is if not a miracle
Than a kind of Distant Dream so far from us
It cannot possibly connect to what we are and would be.
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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Words Against Death
WORDS AGAINST DEATH
All the immortals are moral:
Tubercular Kafka spared Treblinka
Lunatic Nietzsche banging a piano to oblivion
Great Tolstoy escaping to a railroad coach,
Gentle Yeats frigid at Ben Bulben.
What lives is a work and that imperfectly:
A thousand bankrupt eyes ferreting the hearts of dead poets
Seeking confirmation for some strange emotion,
Doing the work in the course, being ‘intellectual’,
Satisfying a wicked ambition for
Knowledge or Love or Understanding.
Do these absurd gropings constitute an adequate remembrance?
And if they do, if deep within the heart of some wise reader
There lurks a true Nietzschean spirit,
Will Nietzsche live because of it?
Is Remembrance no matter how deeply touched by love,
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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Irritation Is Not The Best Feeling To Begin A Poem With
IRRITATION IS NOT THE BEST FEELING TO BEGIN A POEM WITH
Irritation is not the best Feeling to begin a poem with
But the great heat, the great humidity
The slowness of my mind on Motzei Shabbat
The many errands that must be done tomorrow
The inability to begin true work,
The news of another anti- Semitic utterance by the Nobel Prize winner Gunter Grass
Above all the worry over the health of a family member
All these irritate and disturb-
And I can at best write a few plain lines
Begin to work
To make myself feel better
But not really influence what is outside myself-
And too the irritation that my poem and my words
Will reach a few at best
While the mendacious former Waffen SS member's poem
Has already made its hateful way to headlines in the world-
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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I Am A Man Overwhelmed By My Own Feeling
I am a man overwhelmed by my own feeling
Wherever I walk I see people I knew
On Yanovsky St. I think of Yosef ben-David
Who so much wanted to live
And who appreciated my caring for him-
Always in Shul on Shabbat near Mincha time
I think of my good friend Moshe Bobrovsky
He was the most optimistic person I have known
He always had time for the degree he was going to get
He will have to get it now in the world to come-
The Holy Teacher David Herzberg always appears to me
When I am at the Kotel
We used to meet there
The highest Torah he would say is the conversation of friends-
Rabbi Pearl with his shulmanship
In French Hill at Ramot Tzion so so many -
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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I In My Forever Going On
I IN MY FOREVER GOING ON
I in my forever going on hear my own voice again and again
Repeating and repeating theme after theme:
“We will all die and all our loved ones be gone”
“To love here now those we love is all that we can best do”
“This little Israel surviving is still the best hope to somehow keep alive the hope of those lost in suffering in our long history”
“We may not be the last signal of the Universe but on Earth we humans are the jest and riddle the glory and the greatness of God’s universe”
The same themes,
Round and round over and over again-
As if to live were to be always returning to what we most are
And where we want to go is what we long ago knew inside as us.
I am not the man I wanted to be,
Or the writer, or the poet,
Or the great great great redeemer
Of my own father’s suffering
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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