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CAUGHT IN THE NET 51 -  POETRY  BY NORBERT HIRSCHHORN

Series Editor - Jim Bennett
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Introduction by Jim Bennett
 

Hello.  Welcome to a new series of CITN.  We will be looking at the work of individual poets in each edition and I hope it will help our readers to discover some new and exciting writing.  This series is open to all to submit and I am now keen to read new work for this series.

CITN 51. This  edition features the poetry of NORBERT HIRSCHHORN

You can join the CITN mailing list at - http://www.poetrykit.org/pkl/index.htm and following the links for Caught in the Net.

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CONTENTS

1 - BIOGRAPHY
2 – POETRY 

ELEGY 

I WILL ALLOW MYSELF JUST ONE POLITICAL POEM  

DIRECTIONS

DEATH IN VENICE

ECLOGUE, JOHNSON VERMONT

ON NOT SPEAKING ILL OF THE DEAD   

NOTES FROM INSIDE A SNOW GLOBE

MNEMOSYNE

BASHERTE

3 - AFTERWORD
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1 – BIOGRAPHY:  NORBERT HIRSCHHORN

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2 - POETRY 

 ELEGY                                                         

            (Uncle Bernie, 1912-1993)

For the lullaby story of butterflies and gnomes,

            Three moons and a cracked river.

For the hairy, fleshy hands pulling coins from my ear,

            Three moons and a cracked river.

For blue silk suits, perfumed face, and blue-nimbus cigar,

            Three moons and a cracked river.

For loud kisses we traded on each other's bald head,

            Three moons and a cracked river.

And for the mute blind dwarf curled up like a molt,

            Three moons...a cracked river.

I WILL ALLOW MYSELF JUST ONE POLITICAL POEM                                                    

I will ravage your trees, the ones your father planted,

            and their fathers before them,

            so your children must sit in the boiling sun,

            so I may listen to them thirst.

I will smash your houses, scatter gas and glass

            into your eyes, blind you in my rage.

I will hunt you down:

            in your bed, at your table, in your fields.

            Your children will fall in strange streets,

            their mothers keen over empty coffins.

I will choke your nightingales.

I will poison your doves.

My David to your Goliath!  I will crush your head

with missiles, like an egg shattered on rocks.

I will destroy your name.  You have no name.

            I alone will name you.  No one shall know you.

            You shall be a roach unto nations.

I will beat you and burn you and beat you

            until you stop hating me.

                        Now let grief consume our trees -

                        we shall instead plant dead bodies,

                        and eat of them their fruit.

DIRECTIONS

My ancestors once came from Africa,

footprints preserved in volcanic dust,

families walking side-by-side,

trying not to get lost. Their early words

must have been: “How do I get to?…”

a waterhole, safe trails avoiding

sabre-tooth cats. I was in a jungle once,

in Surinam, tracking with our Wayana

Indian guide under high canopies

of birdcall and buzz, when with Darwinian

sheepish grin he announced he was lost;

we had to wait for someone to show us where to go. 

I was in Deutschland once, my father sleeping rough,

evading the Gestapo until we could all escape.

I was once in a marriage, sleeping rough,

no idea how to get somewhere I didn’t even know,

searching for love where it couldn’t be found.

Now in London, I often give directions

to drivers that, since I walk, put them at mercies

of one-way streets; they’re long gone when I

realize how wrong I was; wonder if

they ever found where they wanted to go;

think about directions I’ve always needed:

how to be good, which way to heaven.

DEATH IN VENICE

“Stand up straight!” my mother said,

“or you’ll turn into a  hunchback

and no one will marry your sister.”

“Size-places, now!” my teacher said.

“Hey, you, stand up straight,

don’t be such a lump.”

“Mister, please, stand up straight, or else

how can I fit the jacket?”

“Why don’t you stand up straight – Oh,

depressed again are we?  Well,

that does it, I’m leaving.”

“Lie down straight,” my mortician said,

“I haven’t got all day.”

ECLOGUE, JOHNSON VERMONT

Across a wooded trail, shrouded in oak,

in maple: rusted rails, overgrown ties,

and there the remnants of a dining car –

an exquisite tooled frame hollowed out by

cycles of ice, sun, reverting to earth,

its molecules ground down by mice and moles.

Also I by angel-hand designed, wonder

now how to keep whole.  Like Osiris,

I’ve splintered in every major city.

As I vex my wife with this late-life terror,

she turns me to another crossing:

At the Palestine-Israel checkpoint:

barbed wire runs, strip searches,

a heavy rain, dark field clotted with mud,

January’s wind gnawing the cheek,

an Arab day worker, almost old, hard used,

awaiting his ride after eighteen hours

of putting bread on the table.

Every reason to be mean.

He saw my wife standing there,

small, bedraggled, going the other way.

The man gave her, gave her, his umbrella.

Pay attention. We’re all just passing through.

We leave so much, so little: 

atoms, poems, that umbrella.

ON NOT SPEAKING ILL OF THE DEAD                               

When at last I died she dressed me in my best:

Cutaway coat, four-in-hand, Eton collar.

As once I vexed her, now she won't let me rest,

And props me upright in the old front parlor.

At tea-time or when friends come to dine

She defers gravely to my opinion

On life, on art, the temperaments of wine.

All marvel at my mute erudition.

Daily I decay – purulent eyes, scabrous cheeks.

She must enjoy my increasing rank smell –

But for quick whisks I've not been dusted in weeks –

An encore to my own horrid denial:

    The way I treated our love, dead long ago,

    Which I refused to bury, or to let go.

NOTES FROM INSIDE A SNOW GLOBE

Here we farm potatoes and so we are

at peace. Our town is poor but decent,

our pleasure’s sitting still, in rows

on park benches looking gently at The General,

pigeons on his head. So poor, our ragged little tailor

instead of pure wool, flax or cotton sews motley

into pants, shirts and coats. Nonetheless our streets

stay clean and white, and the grass is cropped by goats.

The opaque dome that serves as sky turns

from day-bright to electric amber to indigo at night.  True,

we have earthquakes – heralded by a condor-like penumbra

overhead – which we call the Great Shakings,

as wind and whistling scatter ash and ember on the pond,

the schoolyard, the burial ground.

But nothing important, thank God, ever falls down.

Soon, stillness again; and we try not to remember.   

MNEMOSYNE

the pond we paint around the fish

a shark drifting into view

memory trawled to surface

purified re-interred

forced by flagellants with razors and chains

our wounds dearer to us than yours to you

a medusa head a serpent’s tongue

brother of fear sister of shame

memory like mourning in the presence of a corpse

the corpse refusing burial

buildings pocked by bullets and mortars

refusing to collapse

like the post-apocalyptic tribe sitting on a midden

of glass, plastic, rusted rebars

watching the blank white screen in the hollow below

waiting for the poster gods to come home

and when she fails us we chase after crying

uh-uh-uh

BASHERTE^*

(“…and I – / I took the one less traveled by…” Robert Frost)

And I, I escaped from Vienna to England – the War –

then America where I grew up, became a doctor,

married M, a Catholic, which made my parents cry. Yearning

to cure the world, I went to Egypt, divorced, met C –

an anthropologist – fell in love: this the one true road I’ve traveled.                        

And I, I escaped from Vienna to Palestine, where I grew up,

became a doctor; yearning to heal the world (tikkun olam)

I practiced medicine in the Negev, met C –

an anthropologist studying Bedouin traditions – fell in love,

and joined this, the one road I’ve traveled.

And I, I escaped from Vienna, but neither to America nor Palestine,

grew up in England, became a doctor, married my classmate’s

sister E; but then her career, my career estranged us; so, yearning

to restore my world I turned to public health, met C –

an anthropologist teaching Bedouin traditions –  fell in love,

and joined this, the one road I’ve traveled.

And I, instead of M (a Catholic), I married my classmate’s sister N

whose warm Jewish family nestled me into medicine in the suburbs:

big house, big pool, Cadillac DeVille: I made my parents proud.

Then N grew morose and I starved; yearning to escape that world

one day I just walked away, turned to public health, where I met C –

my Pole Star – to join this, the only road I’ve traveled by.

*Yiddish – the ‘destined one.’

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4 - Afterword

Email Poetry Kit - info@poetrykit.org   - if you would like to tell us what you think.  We are looking for other poets to feature in this series, and are open to submissions.  Please send one poem and a short bio to - info@poetrykit.org

Thank you for taking the time to read Caught in the Net.  Our other magazine s are Transparent Words ands Poetry Kit Magazine, which are webzines on the Poetry Kit site and this can be found at - http://www.poetrykit.org/