TWO POEMS
CALL, DIME
TWO POEMS DIME CALL A stubbled old Jew on the corner begging a tenth ... So difficult, scrounging for minyans nowadays, the souls of thousands of Jews must be trapped behind their...
...But I believe the fathers have something to say...
...I have been the watch for just an hour or so, And I am only twenty five, But in this time I have seen that a cold eye Cast on life or death is as brittle As the wire...
...I picture an archaeologist, oblivious to the thought of a skeleton wired together by my dime call...
...Mark Helprin Mark Helprin's fiction has appeared in THE NEW YORKER and in MOMENT...
...I'm going to tie these phylacteries till my head rings, till they tell me...
...Several Jews from India pass by, also guarding, Turned in blankets, hard cloth, a symbol Of their overspilling country...
...So difficult, scrounging for minyans nowadays, the souls of thousands of Jews must be trapped behind their yellowing sternums, a pulsing milky phlogiston in the earth...
...Since I have no wish to cast A mocking filament of what we are, I write For purpose firm as a star whose light Is murdered by the gentleness of a passing cloud...
...COMINGS BACK, will be published by Doubleday in the fall...
...My darling wife of but a year In one remembrance thunders clear Across the breach of such pronouncements...
...And I believe in the archaeologist, ear to ground and eye sun-thin through his lens, translating the many dead tongues...
...New wire in the light of mercury is white, Like frost, cold, barbed lines...
...IN RECOGNITION OF FRAILTY I have hardly the strength to stand, And words must be quick, as I transgress, Writing by lantern light A sentry's letter home...
...it wraps around a buried telephone cable confounding the voice of the living at intervals, now you understand the frequent spider-webbing dulling my throat...
...His book JAN 31 was nominated for a National Book Award last year, and his latest work...
...Albert Goldbarth Albert Goldbarth is on the creative writing faculty at Cornell University...
...A DOVE OF THE EAST, a collection of his stories, was recently published by Knopf...
...Like the phone on the wall, black box with its message...
...To oppose, we have too few, and so I guard above The conquered town, Ramallah, Height of God, white mosques and a tower Tipped with blue as if a bird's egg...
Vol. 1 • January 1976 • No. 6
