Kaddish, Part I

Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk on
the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village.

downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I've been up all night, talking,
talking, reading the Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray Charles blues
shout blind on the phonograph

the rhythm the rhythm--and your memory in my head three years after-And
read Adonais' last triumphant stanzas aloud--wept, realizing
how we suffer--

And how Death is that remedy all singers dream of, sing, remember,
prophesy as in the Hebrew Anthem, or the Buddhist Book of Answers--
and my own imagination of a withered leaf--at dawn--

Dreaming back thru life, Your time--and mine accelerating toward Apocalypse,


the final moment--the flower burning in the Day--and what comes after,

looking back on the mind itself that saw an American city

a flash away, and the great dream of Me or China, or you and a phantom
Russia, or a crumpled bed that never existed-


like a poem in the dark--escaped back to Oblivion--

No more to say, and nothing to weep for but the Beings in the Dream,
trapped in its disappearance,

sighing, screaming with it, buying and selling pieces of phantom, worshipping
each other,

worshipping the God included in it all--longing or inevitability?--while it
lasts, a Vision--anything more?

It leaps about me, as I go out and walk the street, look back over my shoulder,
Seventh Avenue, the battlements of window office buildings shouldering
each other high, under a cloud, tall as the sky an instant--and
the sky above--an old blue place.

or down the Avenue to the south, to--as I walk toward the Lower East Side
--where you walked 50 years ago, little girl--from Russia, eating the
first poisonous tomatoes of America frightened on the dock

then struggling in the crowds of Orchard Street toward what?--toward
Newark-


toward candy store, first home-made sodas of the century, hand-churned ice
cream in backroom on musty brownfloor boards--

Toward education marriage nervous breakdown, operation, teaching school,
and learning to be mad, in a dream--what is this life?

Toward the Key in the window--and the great Key lays its head of light
on top of Manhattan, and over the floor, and lays down on the
sidewalk--in a single vast beam, moving, as I walk down First toward
the Yiddish Theater--and the place of poverty

you knew, and I know, but without caring now--Strange to have moved
thru Paterson, and the West, and Europe and here again,

with the cries of Spaniards now in the doorstops doors and dark boys on
the street, firs escapes old as you

--Tho you're not old now, that's left here with me--

Myself, anyhow, maybe as old as the universe--and I guess that dies with
us--enough to cancel all that comes--What came is gone forever
every time-


That's good!That leaves it open for no regret--no fear radiators, lacklove,
torture even toothache in the end--

Though while it comes it is a lion that eats the soul--and the lamb, the soul,


in us, alas, offering itself in sacrifice to change's fierce hunger--hair
and teeth--and the roar of bonepain, skull bare, break rib, rot-skin,
braintricked Implacability.


Ai! ai!we do worse! We are in a fix!And you're out, Death let you out,
Death had the Mercy, you're done with your century, done with
God, done with the path thru it--Done with yourself at last--Pure
--Back to the Babe dark before your Father, before us all--before the
world--

There, rest.No more suffering for you.I know where you've gone, it's good.

No more flowers in the summer fields of New York, no joy now, no more
fear of Louis,

and no more of his sweetness and glasses, his high school decades, debts,
loves, frightened telephone calls, conception beds, relatives, hands--

No more of sister Elanor,--she gone before you--we kept it secret you
killed her--or she killed herself to bear with you--an arthritic heart
--But Death's killed you both--No matter--

Nor your memory of your mother, 1915 tears in silent movies weeks and
weeks--forgetting, agrieve watching Marie Dressler address humanity,
Chaplin dance in youth,

or Boris Godunov, Chaliapin's at the Met, halling his voice of a weeping Czar
--by standing room with Elanor & Max--watching also the Capital
ists take seats in Orchestra, white furs, diamonds,

with the YPSL's hitch-hiking thru Pennsylvania, in black baggy gym skirts
pants, photograph of 4 girls holding each other round the waste, and
laughing eye, too coy, virginal solitude of 1920

all girls grown old, or dead now, and that long hair in the grave--lucky to
have husbands later--

You made it--I came too--Eugene my brother before (still grieving now and
will gream on to his last stiff hand, as he goes thru his cancer--or kill
--later perhaps--soon he will think--)

And it's the last moment I remember, which I see them all, thru myself, now
--tho not you

I didn't foresee what you felt--what more hideous gape of bad mouth came
first--to you--and were you prepared?

To go where?In that Dark--that--in that God? a radiance? A Lord in the
Void?Like an eye in the black cloud in a dream?Adonoi at last, with
you?

Beyond my remembrance! Incapable to guess! Not merely the yellow skull
in the grave, or a box of worm dust, and a stained ribbon--Deathshead
with Halo?can you believe it?

Is it only the sun that shines once for the mind, only the flash of existence,
than none ever was?

Nothing beyond what we have--what you had--that so pitiful--yet Triumph,


to have been here, and changed, like a tree, broken, or flower--fed to the
ground--but made, with its petals, colored, thinking Great Universe,
shaken, cut in the head, leaf stript, hid in an egg crate hospital, cloth
wrapped, sore--freaked in the moon brain, Naughtless.

No flower like that flower, which knew itself in the garden, and fought the
knife--lost

Cut down by an idiot Snowman's icy--even in the Spring--strange ghost
thought some--Death--Sharp icicle in his hand--crowned with old


roses--a dog for his eyes--cock of a sweatshop--heart of electric
irons.


All the accumulations of life, that wear us out--clocks, bodies, consciousness,
shoes, breasts--begotten sons--your Communism--'Paranoia' into
hospitals.

You once kicked Elanor in the leg, she died of heart failure later.You of
stroke.Asleep?within a year, the two of you, sisters in death.Is
Elanor happy?

Max grieves alive in an office on Lower Broadway, lone large mustache over
midnight Accountings, not sure.His life passes--as he sees--and
what does he doubt now?Still dream of making money, or that might
have made money, hired nurse, had children, found even your Immortality,
Naomi?

I'll see him soon.Now I've got to cut through to talk to you as I didn't
when you had a mouth.
Forever.And we're bound for that, Forever like Emily Dickinson's horses
--headed to the End.
They know the way--These Steeds--run faster than we think--it's our own
life they cross--and take with them.

Magnificent, mourned no more, marred of heart, mind behind, married
dreamed, mortal changed--Ass and face done with murder.
In the world, given, flower maddened, made no Utopia, shut under
pine, almed in Earth, blamed in Lone, Jehovah, accept.

Nameless, One Faced, Forever beyond me, beginningless, endless,
Father in death.Tho I am not there for this Prophecy, I am unmarried, I'm
hymnless, I'm Heavenless, headless in blisshood I would still adore

Thee, Heaven, after Death, only One blessed in Nothingness, not
light or darkness, Dayless Eternity-Take
this, this Psalm, from me, burst from my hand in a day, some
of my Time, now given to Nothing--to praise Thee--But Death

This is the end, the redemption from Wilderness, way for the Wonderer,
House sought for All, black handkerchief washed clean by weeping
--page beyond Psalm--Last change of mine and Naomi--to God's perfect
Darkness--Death, stay thy phantoms!

II
Over and over--refrain--of the Hospitals--still haven't written your
history--leave it abstract--a few images
run thru the mind--like the saxophone chorus of houses and years-remembrance
of electrical shocks.
By long nites as a child in Paterson apartment, watching over your
nervousness--you were fat--your next move-


By that afternoon I stayed home from school to take care of you-once
and for all--when I vowed forever that once man disagreed with my
opinion of the cosmos, I was lost-


By my later burden--vow to illuminate mankind--this is release of
particulars--(mad as you)--(sanity a trick of agreement)-But
you stared out the window on the Broadway Church corner, and
spied a mystical assassin from Newark,
So phoned the Doctor--'OK go way for a rest'--so I put on my coat
and walked you downstreet--On the way a grammarschool boy screamed,


unaccountably--'Where you goin Lady to Death'? I shuddered-


and you covered your nose with motheaten fur collar, gas mask
against poison sneaked into downtown atmosphere, sprayed by Grandma-


And was the driver of the cheesebox Public Service bus a member of
the gang?You shuddered at his face, I could hardly get you on--to New
York, very Times Square, to grab another Greyhound--