Witz

Welcome to Whateverwitz

ABOVE IS ABOVE, AND BELOW IS BELOW.

The Rambam says in the name of Rabbi Eliezer: The things in the heavens have been created of the heavens, the things on the earth of the earth…hence reinforcing the doctrine of two Substances, and anticipating an argument v. Spinoza’s interpretation of Aristotle — too long a story, for now.

They’re in the middle, though, the mittel, we’re saying.

Purgatory, if you want, a strange land without land, and without firmament either, domain of a third Substance, don’t ask.

Above is the sky.

Below, it’s the ocean.

The middle of the ocean, the mittel: halfway here, halfway there, maybe this, maybe that, and maybe…maybe yes, maybe no, and perhaps — all up in the air.

Above the ocean, stillnesses, the sun’s twin among waters amid water, fishes, the Leviathan and the whale, kelp and salt — enough salt to keep any Lot in wives for a long lot of hereafter, it’s said.

Below the sky’s waters — the flying thing, a refitted, updated chariot of sorts.

Above the ocean below they’re thousands upon thousands of an archaic measurement above, flying in an aeroplane now but in the wrong direction. Opposite. In return.

As for the aeroplane — it’s old, ancient, it’s losing things, rickety rack. Aisles of desolate plane.

Flappity, flap, flap — it’s shedding wings, the engines might stall at any moment; inquire as to the status of the landing gear, it’s not like it’ll do any good.

To any Omnipresence worth the Name, wandering would seem just like staying put — and, for a moment, a day, a week, a moon…they’re fixed there, they’re frozen, stayed in the sky like the sun of Joshua’s day: and the earth rests its spinning, and the stillwater’s stilled, from floor to surface of the deep nothing’s flowing anywhere, as stilled and as stilling as it’d been the day before the second day, precreationary still, a Sabbath from turbulence, in flight their Shabbos from flight, they’re just, staying, put…and all this Mittel’s dead to them, invisible, clouded and blue and white and wisped, though they peek through their misted windows anyway; they’re fingering rosaries, mumbling their prayers in American, and in infelicitous Latin, too, Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison, Hail Mary Mother of Our Fathers Who Art, but many are Unbelievers, if you can believe, still; some abstain, others drink…all try to understand.

They’re in the air. And the air is also above them…and the air is also above the air, then above that air, less air, and then through that lessening, no air, and the Above is more like an Around: there’s air inside in which they’re enplaned, there’s air inside them in their gasps, groans, moaning, prayers, and then there’s air outside, though that that separates the two airs is anyone’s guess: this separation, whatever it is, whichever’s it is, whether of heaven or earth, is the shell after shelling, the husk or the hulling, a movable mechitza, stay with me…the indigestible tubing of an unctuous salami slung through space & time; they’re the thick mixedmeat stuffed inside the inedible, indelible, tubing; they’re the nuts inside the shell, rattling around, the seeds inside the husk. Hulled. There’s one air on one side and there’s another air on the other, the air inside laden with virus, heavy with flu, stifling, I can’t breathe, I’m choking…the air outside’s pure and open, but they need the air inside, they need it to live. If pressure’s lost, oxygen will fall. Rubberized masks. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be at all. Make sure to fasten yours first, and only then those of the kinder.

They’re in the air inside in the outside air, with air above that and above that air less air, then above that air lessening itself into no air and then above that around, only space; they’re wandering, sort of, kinda, not astray or any other species of lost, they know their ultimate destination, terminus, the end territory, Niemandsland’s ever, the antipode poles…it’s printed on their tickets, what’s not printed’s the route: the route is known and the route is unknown, it’s known to be unknown; there’s an ocean to arch; they’ve risen in the air, then they’ve unleavened, evenedout: they’ve left the light and will leave it again later that day, only to…so long, too long, forever, never; they’re fixed like stars, they’re unfixed like stars falling; they’re migratory snowbirds flown east, the wrong direction, don’t squawk, opposite, gone opposed; they’re schooled fishes, scattering return with a flap of the tail; they’re shooting here, slingshotted there, through wisps of precipitate, high and thin nimbi, flying an arc through the arcless air — out over the ocean, and to the Other Side.

Many of them are flying Class; these people have plenty of food and drink, entertainment, magazines and newspapers the headlines of which inform fate. One interpretation holds that Class is the only way to wander, better to go out in style, what’s your time worth, what’s your money worth, now. In Class, they’re packed two, three to a row aisle depending, reparating their armrests, adjusting their position of recline: though the available positions of recline would seem at least theoretically infinite, mechanically, mundanely, there are only two, which are fully reclined and partially; no one is unreclined, it’s unthinkable. A Mister Sanderson is fully reclined, his shoes off, his socks a shade of night three hours lighter than the aisle upholstery, five hours lighter than the outside at present; they’ll fly through the night, and the morning; next to him, and presently asleep, a Misses Sanderson née D’Agostino (at whose insistence both she and her husband had been upgraded following the presentation of the deed to their home) is only partially reclined, minding the goy sitting behind her: that goy, a Mister Sells, with nearly adequate legroom, is not as thoughtful with regard to the passenger just behind him: he’s reclined fully, and the woman one row back is arthritic, and overweight. Deep Vein Thrombosis. Pulmonary embolism. Lost luggage, don’t forget what’s stowed underseat. O the overheads. Remind me, or don’t. This to be worried about, too. That woman behind him, a Misses Sims, is able to recline without guilt: no one’s behind her at present; that seat’s occupant, a Mister Smart, has been on the toilet for hours. This Mister Sells, obese, morbidly, bound in buckle, is unable to sit still, he shifts in his seat, which movement wrests Miss Sims’ tray loose, Miss Sims slams her tray up, fastens it, hoping only that the adamancy of her slam, and her murmurs of annoyance, might keep him still, whoever he is, stop his shift, whoever he thinks he is, and it doesn’t, nothing does, ever will; they’re all nervous if stupid and neurotic if smart, despondent and full of demands, and this despite the ministrations of any attendant, the stewards and stewardesses in their uniforms freshly ironed if not, also, stiffly starched, stalking the aisles with hot moist towelettes draped over their arms strong and outstretched, as if involved in their own personal Ascensions, with complimentary blankets, and pillows and, though only upon request, slippers and eyemasks; limbs and heads ache, they’re shouting to hear one another over the air, the airs, the air of the air; they’re all praying, though only some of them know that they are, while others opt for the prayer that is distraction, diversion, talk talk talk; the aeroplane entire’s one inestimable noise of many noises, and air.

A goy graced with ideological facial stubble rises, walks to the front of Class, then screams he’s planning to blow up the plane.

No one’s listening.

No, he insists, you don’t understand, none of you, shema, listen up: I’m strapped with explosives, I’ll blow us all right out of the sky…and still, no one hears, and so he stomps his foot, pulls down the microphone to the PA, feedback — the stewardess takes it from him with a stern reproach, return to seat; he yells even louder, shrieks through an accent who can hope to identify.

I have enough explosives wired on my person to blow up ten aeroplanes, one hundred, I don’t know.

And I won’t hesitate, not for a moment, don’t think I will, and still the talking goes on, a Babel of chatty.

I’m serious, he’s promising he’s serious now…I’m warning you, he warns, I pull this, motioning to a small pin protruding with a wink from his vest, and, honest to God, we’re in serious trouble.

And then one woman, sitting directly in front of his stand in the aisle, there at its head, this passenger whose attention’s flitted in and out of this outburst, insane and as such, ignorable, ignores, too, her husband’s response to one of her questions—Are we there yet? and motions instead to this enraged terrorist, who leans into an audience with her he thinks and, grabbing at his vest, she asks him another: Aren’t you hot in that? like why don’t you take that thing off? and then, without waiting for an answer, drops her hands, returns to her husband, to resume an even earlier discussion pertaining to what.

Okay, he says, one more time…I’m only going to say this one more time, listen up: I’m prepared to blow this aeroplane right out of the sky — if you don’t listen to me, I’ll end it right now, honest, and then when the light flashes on, seatbelts, turbulence, ding, ding, the goy quickly returns to his seat, fuming, and mortified.

Amid the rare silence, a Mister Smith asks loudly for a refill (water, coffee, tea, or disappointment), shakes his mug, plastic, into the aisle, taps it throttle him annoyingly against his tray, which’s in its appropriate upright position.

Here in Class, there are sons of Sanders and Sandermans and Sandermens and Sandersens and Sanfords and Sandfords, too, in this row alone. Up front are all the Arnolds, with the Zimmers down toward the rear. In Rows 1–2, the Abernathy family, with the Bertrams, and the Christians, the Christiansens, the Christiansons, in Row 3 the Donalds, and Elmores, in Rows 4–8 the Hards, and the Hesses; there are whole sections of O’Malleys, O’Nallys, O’Nellys, Spinellis, Tartellis, and Worths. Amid the Sandersons here in Class, there’s a whole family of them, myriad generations like stars or their light: greatgrandfather and mother, grandfather and mother, father and mother, and lastly Mister & Misses Sanderson, who were wed only last night: the sky, like the glass should’ve been but wasn’t, is freshly shattered; this trip’s their honeymoon, though enforced, if required, Misses Sanderson’s first appreciable time spent at the pleasure of her new relatives, the Sanderson-inlaws, and so far she hasn’t spilled anything, so good; let’s hope, we hope, this luck holds.

After the Zwicks, and the Zychs, there’s a vestibule of bathrooms, all currently Occupied, reserved only for the needs of those flying Class — as for the rest, they’ll go where they’re going.

After Class, then, is the section called No Class: there are no seats here and its people, they’re stacked to the top, writhing limbs and sinuous spines — the airing of grievance, the noise: that of a crack or break, a short dry snap; heads peek through holes the span of one life, heads poke through the holes of their mouths voicing death, screams fill the section, and shouts for help, food and water, then a hatch opens a draft and silence and a steward or stewardess who can tell or breathe even throws a mess of water and food out into the mess, then the struggle all over again: these shoes stepping throats to the floor, these hands strangling other hands, teeth gnashing at teeth, women and infants and their fathers, their husbands, turned a cargo of raw, suppurating, unidentifiable flesh; then, it quiets again with the hatch opened a creak, cracked light from the front, and another steward or stewardess throws in more, leftovers from Class, more food and water probably not potable now, then the struggle begins yet again.

Though soon, they’ll reach the Meeting Point…we’re talking the huge illuminated I, the zentrum, the centrum or center, give or take, they’re not sure what to do, what’s expected — where wakefulness is sleep, where sleep is dream, where dream is, forget it, all Under the Sign of the Eigenlicht, the hypnagogic giving way to the hypnopompic, don’t you understand (in Class, they’re popping those suspect pills, spread out scattered on their trays alongside tumblers of water, these medications on prescriptions from physician friends become newly Affiliated, feeling just terrible about this whole situation, I’m sure — tell me, what should I do about it, this isn’t exactly healing a body, it’s more like healing a world) — this is where everything falls into the Other, its other Other…a past, previous incarnations: the fall of the physical into the nonphysical, the idea into the act, the way the spheres merge, sun, then split, moon, then merge again, sun to moon then sun again…in Class cleared, a heap of maps now spread out on their trays, too, though no maps are really necessary, though they’re not forbidden, just not advised, excess, an overpack: after all, it’s not as if they’ll ever be left on their own, to fend for themselves and their lives, without oversight, without guidance. Anyway, they’ve all long memorized the Quarters — they’ve had hours, all day, days; they know what to expect. They’re only touring to confirm their suspicions, only traveling in order to compare their own Real with that of their others, whomever. They trace the land’s imperfections with eyes crucified on their forefingers; pointing some to the left, others to the right, they behold the sky out their windows though the sky is everywhere, too, and everywhere indivisible. Air. Languages over the loudspeaker interrupt one another, repeating, reiterating, arguing then…how an aeroplane traces the arch of the sky, is traced from land to Land in an arch, across the Ocean, then further: they’re lower now, at an elevation incomprehensible now. Pilot speaks garble now. Speed. Height now. Velocity. Over. Local Time now. Temperature. What.

Ocean meets Land, meets an ocean and the land, it’s parceled out, piecemeal from this high above, and everything at last — seems understandable: how they glide over whole green yellow smoky mirrored silver dead surfaces as if no one down there’s ever mattered, will ever matter, in passing, as passed, as if those people, if they exist and we have our doubts, exist only for the idea that the world, it’s greater than themselves — only an idea, though ours, too. Vert, luteous, the sprawling of awe. It’d been raining sideways earlier, or so, pit pat at a slant, but they’re lower now, and the sun shines, and they glide over morning again, through morning’s again, over the giving way of the measured to the unmeasured, the separation of the kept from the keepless, then back to the measured, again, the pieced together, the parceled and the green and the light, the — no way else to say it — awesome sprawl surfaced, as graveless. They’ll die here. Not yet.

They land on the Land, arriving now at the first of many gates, too many, too gated — then, begin to variously struggle their ways off, though there’s only one way…though the processes are infinite, near enough, the result is always the same; they’re taking stock of the underseats, then the overheads…overheard: the tips, the timesavers, the suggestions so helpful…they gaze around nervously, itch, scratch at themselves in wonder how they’re shelled, husked, they’ve deplaned, made it through; they stand with their suitcases, with their garmentbags, and their carryons, too, held between their legs; tired, they’re hungry and thirsty; and they’re complaining, they’re complaining already, always complaining; they’d paid so much for this, too much, were made to pay, to be here, to be here again, to arrive again here, which is where…after all this wandering, welcome, Shalom — and hour after hour, day after day, the planes keep coming and coming, circle then circle the circling, land.

Mister Smart on the plastic of the toilet he’s sitting, he’s still, his loud made inaudible above the din, let’s give thanks…he shifts on the seat, nibbles at the dried fruit, the apples and prunes, dates and figs, which he’d illegally smuggled onboard, then sips at the sink, which is kept on, or out of order: a goy used to spending so much of his time so disposed, disposing, he’s trained himself to turn the pages of his newspaper with the toes of a foot, thumbs out the hole of a sock, unkempt nail grazing the headline—Shade State of the Union: Transports Proceeding On Schedule…

At an aeroport in New York, called La Guardia as it’s named for a goy who before he became mayor worked with languages and with speaking them and asking questions in them upon the Island they’d died on; in case you were interested, just so we’re clear — there in its provisional chapel, a goy whose identity’s being withheld because his collaboration here should ensure the acceptance of his family’s conversion, a Chaplain, of a species nondenominational, a minister to the transient, retained to soothe the aviophobic, the afraid to fly, stands alone in his modest makeshift plasterdom, his cubicle celled between toilets, M restroom to the right of him, W to the left, and reflects: his departure date’s tomorrow…stink seethes in from both sides, urinal overflow, a bath of clogged stalls, leaks in under the leaning walls, a draft of deluge, waste staining in streaks, the mush of all plys; he flagellates himself with a pleather belt, snakeskin, bought surplus, dutyfree, then tries to find a name for a God that won’t offend anyone even if used loudly, in vain; blood falls from his back to mix with the piss, not his, mixing into a drainless dreckswirl on the floor, puddling around his feet sloping down toward the pulpit, or toward where a pulpit would have been if his budget would’ve provided: there’s only an arch of a rainbow on the wall there, an ennobling decal, with no ends to the rainbow, only its arch, the highest middle section in the middle of the wall; it would end, on both sides, in toilets.

Codename Thomachefsky II, though he’s no relation to, even after all these meals still follows the instructions given on the sheet they’ve provided; though it’s stained with every manner of savory costcutting, the steps he’d memorized his first day of work are still interpretable: on the tray, which is plastic, goes one Main Pill, a capsule of cholent, the protein, plasticwrapped, one Side Pill One, the rye, the starch, plasticwrapped, one Side Pill Two, mixed vegetable, plasticwrapped, one Dessert Pill, strudel, plasticwrapped, one Spork, plastic, one Safety Knife, plastic, one Seasoning Packet, plastic, one Napkin, plastic, one Mug, plastic, Nondairy Milk Substitute, plasticwrapped, Water, plasticwrapped, then Step #12, wrap all in plastic and affix the stickered seal of kashrut, plastic, atop; none of the plastic edible in the least, and often asphyxiating those to whom it’s occasionally thrown back in No Class: this, wrapped, is the Class Ration, prepared and packaged both in a warehouse far northeast near the aeroport in Queens; its exclusive food & beverage contract held by Al-Cohol Distributors, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Abulafia & Sons, Inc. of Furthest Rockaway, maybe you know where that is…lately, I’m lost. Here, protein’s the upper, starch the downer, vegetable upper, dessert downer — they meet each other halfway; this once mixed with just one packet of powdered wine (extra, ask your attendant for further details), and your average air passenger’s rendered regulation unconscious for up to eight hours, zonked, all ready to go.

Finally, the Solution begins — yet again.

And so there was more trouble for Him, and it was not good, and no one could get any rest.

And we all say — forget it.

Welcome to Whateverwitz, loosely translating to whatever’s joke, anything you want, we’ll laugh, hahaha, O how we’ll indulge you. Those who had chosen not to Affiliate had chosen their deaths…alternately, “those who have not chosen to be chosen,” it’s officially said, how they’ve been chosen for death if not by it. Jawohl, their fate sealed so you needn’t be a sphragist to figure out how. In the beginning, to incite dissent within their ranks with the appointments of quote unquote selfgovernments, establishing a collaborating class of privileged VIPs (Very Important Polaks), all toward the aim of obliterating any sense of community, and so any organized resistance, they hope — to lay the blame upon the blameless, is how. To quote unquote remove them, the Unaffiliated we’re talking, first to enumerate them, round them up, transport them Transatlantic to Polandland proper, then give them the Grand Tour, show them the sites, take it all in, the works, allinclusive; then, terminal transfer to extermination facilities situated at the outer limits of major metropolises throughout the Pale, there to set only as many as neccessary to hard labor servicing the deaths of their family and peers, attending to their minimalized needs, the wanting basic, baring essentials though one goy’s subsistence be another goy’s dream, and this in a manner most costeffective, as inexpensively as possible’s what — and then to murder them, every one of them, dead, and so only the pure will be left; that’s the plan.

Nu, Torque, Hamm asks, what’s the plan — was He on one of those transports? is He dead yet? and what about us…he’s futzing with the yarmulke he has to maintain for work purposes, survival, to avoid the Gestapo’s attention.

I don’t know, says Mada, I don’t think we’re that lucky, or not. My guess is He fled here, not expecting this, who would have. And if He did expect, hymn, then He’s dumber than any of us ever thought.

But they wouldn’t kill Him, would they, Hamm takes the pleather disc from his head (this a newly issued operationally commemorative model: it’s white inviting dirt with prussicblau piping, replete with serial number and a litany of daily blessings wrought on its underside in silvery script), spins it supple around in his hands: they wouldn’t, why would they, wouldn’t make any sense…He’s one of them.

Is He? Not anymore, Hamm, my friend, not anymore…or He is and He isn’t, it’s tough to explain, so difficult nowadays with everyone of no extraction, all these late designates of fractional Faith — the questions, is He a Mischling, who knows, and, anyway, are They, Whoever They are, Whoever They ever are (up to you), the type to make such distinctions; it’s up to Him to decide, the chosen now finally choosing. Who are you, that’s never been voluntary before. Freewill and all, freewilled. This time around, martyrdom’s wholly assured. But He’s not on any of the transports (Mada spits on Hamm’s yarmulke, palms it down into his kink), and neither is he dead…Frank Gelt says, having slid downstairs and across the waxed lobby of the Hotel Under the Sign of the Hotel’s newest Polandland franchise, the Hotel Under the Sign of the Sign of the Hotel in the house’s silkslippers, he’s waving in front of him, in their faces, a sheaf of papers that gives the impression at least of being thick, smallprinted, and tiresome if not entirely, unappealably official — still they’ve been religiously stamped and signed, approved like nobody’s business: nothing registered, he says, apparently He has no number, no designation, whispering crisp quickly to Die once they’ve sequestered themselves in their most modest of suites, with all tips paidout, shades drawn, door locked with the radio on, so as to buzz their conference from any who’d pry: He’s wanted dead, Gelt says, but only by authorities on the Most High, orders direct from the Sanhedrin, Shade himself; lowerlevels have instructions only to turn Him over, ascend Him upstairs. An orchestra chokes. And then come the sermons.

Must’ve entered on a false passport, says Die in complimentary smoking-jacket falling open, exposing his hairless, smallnippled chest; he’s lying on his fourposter, canopied in black, originally topped with the taxidermied head of a grandly shot stag whose eyes, which are glass, he’d suspected of hiding surveillance cameras, microphones, or both, and so had the head ripped from the wall, now hugged under an arm, deantlered. Or, he says, maybe He’s paying His way through, if He can afford it, if He isn’t too cheap. How hard is it to be here illegal, unaccounted for, off the books — that’s the question He should be asking Himself. More like: is anything at all illegal here, eins, zwei…and will anyone ever be called to account?

First thing’s first, though; He’ll be dealt with later, needs be. In order to Polish them off, they all have to be first trained, fistragged then spit: chugged over the landscape, locomotived with cause on back to their old homes, belated, the Kowalskys returned to Polandland as the Kowalksis, neighbors there as they’d been Over Here to the Wisnowskis late of North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, what’d been Illinois, now once again Wiś nowski, you know them, moved back into their houses, their perpetually disarrayed modest flats located in the quote old historic centers unquote, packed in a million tight along with the families that’d usurped them; others, and don’t ask how, we have our methods, their addresses, yours, know from whence everyone came…what’d you think the Library’d been for, goes the thought, such intensive genealogical genius — sent, shipped as damage refused back to the graze of their lamed horses, their stables, their sootdarkened woodenshacks ever further east, further paled, empty for generations it’s been; fires in the hearth, eternal flames, as if history’s been waiting all this time for return, for itself. A facility sprung up outside Camden, Joysey, a magnet for the Tristate, then they’re packed off to the Continent aboard an ancient fallingdown skyshort aeroplane struggling for lift out of Newark. And from there, no one survived. Others soon sprang up everywhere, Canada, Mexico, Americas Central and South, and every flight landed Here, lands — this whole land, its lands, their hemisphere entire, made an enormous, ostensibly infinite Whereverwitz, a Whywald, Nohausen. How, it’s too hard. How, the corrupt, corrupting, commentary, I’m sure. The best and the brightest newly Affiliated lawyers in the world, hard-tushed hardballers all, are initially consulted for free, then retained at cost, to make sure everything’s kosher, that all the ink’s pure and that each binding letter bears its proper ornamentation. Menschs of the conscienced Cloth are rolled back into bolts, stored to mold until the paperwork comes through; their mouths shut with red tape, fingers and hands, too, needle and thread, warehoused for another yet another delay, which has first been scheduled, then rewarehoused, only to be rescheduled again: They the newly Affiliated go and rekindle the whole of the old Garment District to shvitz out the uniforms, largely piecemeal patternwork except for those of the Elite, you know who you are, Singers spooling overtime into night, the darkening lapels of sky collaring closed, silver pips, litzen and ribbons, badges and trim the red of their blood. After they come for the merely clothed, those who are housed, too, they can’t be too far behind: when the hotels go overbooked, Affiliated architects, contractors unto subcontractors, lowly subsubs owing favors to it seems every zoning board president brother-inlaw to ever deface with concrete and cement the turned cheek of the planet, they’re drafted to salary, set to work on the barracks; with layout wall-to-wall, mounted multiunit entertainment systems, hometheaters sounding in surround, minibars, minifridges, the ganze amenities, for the money that is, everything they’d ever expect and at the bare minimum, at least for those traveling Class, every solace basely afforded; lonely housewives/parttime interiordecorators do up even the No Class barracks in differently attractive combinations of mocha, peachish, and a very bright teal; newly landscaped oaks line every perimeter…

Thanks, but how’s the question, how are they killed, that’s what we want to know. For the record, I mean, for the books, History 101—not that we get off on that stuff…but there’s no need to whitewash, delouse, purify, there’s been no call to talk down, we’re all adults here — all the Unaffiliated, those who didn’t voluntarily, of their own accord, up and Affiliate, too?

Oy, you didn’t hear it from me.

There are drownings of aeroplanes downed is how, no way out north or south, east or lost, Ost. There’s only up in the air, then down in the ground.

How they’re immersed in their own blood’s how — that of the youngest saved up, stored in gigantic underground tankards for use in Passovers to come.

How, the ten plagues litany how; they’d cut open bodies still living, then stuff a live frog (alternatively: locusts, or a bevy of firstborn mammalian male beasts), down into the innards, stitch up the poor schmucks again, cauterize, burn, the frog to hop around under the skin, it’d rot then, and soon the patient would rot, too, patience, right in the arms of the greatest Affiliated doctors the world has to offer, ordered, then paid, to withhold treatment. Research. Observe. Or else — experiment your hearts out, or theirs; sphacelate, necrose; do what you will, you’re the professional…

How, too, the methods of an older age have been proven, still are: gas and ovens and air and less air then lack of air, fire. Smoke billows from the chimneys of the Unleavened Bakery — and then, the ash snows, the winter of winter. And the transports, they keep coming and coming, only coming — all day everyday, except the Sabbath, which they’re all ordered to understand as Saturday, is Saturday, are conditioned to the calm of its Shabbos, upon which even the mass death would rest for a light’s worth of life, to be spent sanctified at what has to pass for their leisure: Friday nights roasting Hebrew Nationals^® (sponsoring) over the open fire, wieners stuck on a stick wrapped in pareve marshmallows, too, they’re holding shiralongs, swapping ghosts, reminiscing themselves unto morning, free from muster. As the sun would set the next day they’d make lineup, to make their weekly payments: room & board, the last installments on their life insurance, extending their policies through next Shabbos with money their Guards would shylock them at an interest that’s damn near fascistic.

Don’t worry, though…it’s all to be found in the informative placard you’ll find in the seatpocket in front of you.

In the unlikely event of an emergency, says Doctor Tweiss to his seatmate, his twin, apparently, I’m responsible for this exit.

And you have a problem with that? asks the other Tweiss slapping his twin away from their armrest conceptually shared.

How am I qualified? he slaps him back, I didn’t ask to be seated here.

How are we qualified for anything?

I didn’t ask to be here.

What’s that supposed to mean — you didn’t ask to be seated?

I never asked to be born.

And we’re all out of time…says the other, nu, we’ll pick this up next week — if there’s to be a next week, for them, a tomorrow for any of us…

Inevitably, by dint of their atheism, their agnosticism, what should they call it, this their refusal to convert, stubbornness, pride, inability or unwillingness let’s say to get with the paradise paradigm, they’re on an aeroplane themselves: nearsightedness on their part not only an ocular condition, though each is partially blinded in half of an eyemask they’re sharing, their shoes sheathed in barfbags, whitegripping knuckled their armrests, those separate, and often both of them at once at the armrest in the middle so that they’re unconsciously holding hands; they’re, they won’t admit it, but they’re scared out of their goddamned minds…only hoping, hymn, waiting vaingloriously, for the powers of the Garden to spring them, thinking it’s impossible that this should happen to us, do you know who I am, who we were; thinking, too, if privately though, under the pride, each to his own, and his own personally unlistening God how they’re saying silently over and over again, God, we should’ve listened to Minnie, I told you so, Doctor Tweiss says to the twin of his mind, we should’ve listened to Minnie, I so told you, says the other Doctor Tweiss to himself, too…Minnie who’s living quite safe and happy and all’s good just now, thank you very much, no complaints: a belated Mazel Tov to you and yours is called for Minne who, I’m sorry of course I meant Miri whose God He’s quite foremost in her life as of late, hovering just a hair above her reddened wig or hat the one with the redribbon and feather, a pool-eyed, unnaturally gingy Miri the rabbi’s wife, this rebbetzin recently married into the Dushinsky, formerly Seele, dynasty of what’d previously been Central Ohio, wholly occupied visiting the sick, attending mostly to the souprelated, shoemending needs of what’d been Cincinnati’s direst poor. And so they’re not All here, but most are: those who’ve refused to Affiliate for provide your own stubborn, stiffnecked, pigheaded, sowhearted why — ingathered, but only after being given ample opportunity to afford their release for the price of a soul, what we’re asking: an angel’s sale at a devilish discount; exiled, though only after being given those famously public three chances in which to convert, wishful thinking (a personal stipulation of Shade’s that’s lately earned him the loyalty of the Abulafias; themselves safe for now — but ultimately not to be spared), then taken for a tour of othering’s origins, and the origin, too, of their own deaths, of death itself, the Continent’s chosen export…in order that they should know what opportunity they’ve forsaken, what history they’ve foolhardily refused, shirked, shunned, in favor of fidelity to what — explain it to me.

This is their arrival. Again. They’ve thrown handfuls inside their suitcases — stuffed them…they’ve chalked their suitcases, allowances of one per person unless you’re prepared to, and can, pay for your excess — this limit though not inclusive of any garmentbags, carryons, and toiletrycases, one per person as well; they’ve stuffed themselves, also, with itineraries and with reservations numbers: too many numbers this trip to remember, none of which, though, is to be their date of return. Then, groggy from the flight, lagged and on empty, they’re linedup two-by-two, with some of them to the left, others to the right, to be stripped of their names upon their identification with those of the passenger manifests, the arrivals platform yelled through with a language of mispronunciations, corrections to, corrections to corrections, again — then, to be given a stripping number, yet another, who can remember, who can’t, and they wait.

Funny, you don’t look Unaffiliated…or so these darkuniformed, imperious Officials joke at their foldingtables, just past the baggageclaim, the signage for. A Mister & Misses Pigger pass through, manage a parting wave behind them at what’s their names, from Sunnyvale, Sunnydale, Sonny I forget, husband #4675-89, wife #4675-90, whom the Piggers had talked to the entire flight across two seats and an aisle. At a check in desk halfway around the world, the globe this destination shares, too, at a desk resembling in all of its details the receptiondesk here, both of them made of the same materials, in the same nowhere and on the same day (they’re from the Garden, bought before the fire as a government favor, repurposed to the present), the attendants had been supplied with bags of coal, amply: each passenger of a given sample Group, and each plane a Group, had had a lump stuffed up into him, into her; shifting on their seats, in transit, they’ll squeeze these lumps into service, ensuring mostly unoccupied bathrooms this flight, and centuries of constipation; that is, if only they’ll survive, which is unlikely, and then…diamonds — which are yours to keep, an attendant reminds them over a loudspeaker, until.

They follow the white lines for disembarkation…beyond the desks, receiving a welcomebasket, also, complimentary, gifted with oodles of ointments to apply to their new tattoos (add them up, subtract, make a mountain, sustain); they receive scraps of yellow circles and crosses and circles within crosses within circles, which are still symbols though they might symbolize nothing save the quality of having once meant, which they’re to attach to their new clothing with the needle and thread they’re provided, and display prominently at all times, everafter; they receive spoons, too, then they receive knots of rope in unpredictable lengths with which to hold up the new pants of their uniforms, predominantly comfortable, casual separates; they’re burdened, overburdened, with gifts (one per person, per family, it depends, what’s my mood), and everything’s dutyfree, save their own duty, which is to follow, then die. They-that-went-to-the-right are to report immediately to the baggageclaim; they-that-went-to-the-left, mostly the ill, the already neardeath, in wheelchairs, on crutches, stretchers, and hooked up to tubes and to tanks, are to remain where they are, as if they could do anything else, as if they would, being alone and barely able to remain at all, anywhere, to be met by a representative, shortly, we promise: the pairs are being split by a cast of Selektors, only the finest blue eyes for talent Holywood ever had.

Those who’ve arrived single are forgiven, always are.

Then, there’s Customs to worry about — upon a return that’ll never be, they’ll have everything to declare.

There Is No Monorail Service Today, an announcement, announcing itself, We Regret Any Inconvenience. Thanks, appreciated, sure you do. Menschs with anxious lowerlips and insomniac, daywide eyes stand at Arrivals holding placards with numbers on them, laboriously inked: #’s 4677-18/19, a wave/smile, a smattering of currencies and courtesies, the couple formerly known as the Hicks find their driver. These signs lead the responsorial of welcome: Hello, how was your flight, let me help you with that; the natives are almost excessively kind. The Sandersons meet their mensch: he has the face of a bird, once a bomb landed on his turnedaround cheek, don’t ask, you’re forgiven, he’s forgotten — and are soon en route, motorcaded. Now, drivers are giving them all their first of two options, either I can point out points of interest along the way, explaining to you notable history and geography, what else, architecture, economics, the fine arts, geology, local plant and animal life, you name it, no problem, or I can keep my two hands on the wheel and quiet, your choice. First the tour of this world then, arrival in the next. All their expenses have been paid, by them. They fixed the place up real nice, didn’t they?

Impressive.

Under its previous management, this land had been neglected, had fallen into disrepair, as it’s said. Then, and only after extensive foreign reinvestment, restoration, and the involvedly grantgranted international like…it’s been reopened, and expanded, only now as Polandland (an Americanization of Polyn, it’s said, a word easterly derived from the holy tongue rededicated to meaning: Po, meaning Here, and Lyn, meaning Stay a while, won’t you?), having annexed everything from ocean to ocean, the Atlantic to its other, having displaced its inhabitants at the pleasure of invasion, its new owners presently engaged in turning it into one of the top tourist spots in the world, second only to what Palestein had been, had tried to be, if only for a sun’s slower season — enjoyable, though forcedupon; an excellent final destination; as far as terminus goes, you could do worse for a grave…yesterday’s arrivals monorailed through the outskirts of Polandland, their faces held up against the speed of the glass with the ice and the misting, condensed webs and fiery cracking — though it’s been said that Polandland itself is only an outskirt of Polandland; its outskirts mark the arrowed Meeting Point of all Eternal Returns, past warehouses of factories, processing plants, industrial temples in which it’s said imperfection’s maintained: here the Wechselstube made of weather, Imbiss, Auskunftsplatz, everything rung around its Appell, there plaques screwed to the sky, Zimmer frei, advertising all species of dead, deadening, entertainment…

At one hotel or another, which are really fashionable barracks, doneup Nouveau Beaux, neoArt Deco, in the lobby — its floor underneath the mound of skirts, shoes, and stockings, inlaid with a cruciform mosaic of gold trimmed lavishly in silver and bulletholes — the wives strip for delousing; then, they’re shorn; some opt for a pedicure, others for only a gruff buff of their calluses; as bodied, they’re blushing; there’s a great washing of armpit and feet. Husbands, having been separated into yet another line, are mustered in an adjoining ballroom, its walls hung with tarps over heterodox tapestries and arras. Today’s the first the Sandersons have ever beheld each other naked, it’s more silly than sorry; they avert their eyes; paunches hang over endowments, a money pouch, their testicles, then contracting, broke; water rushes onto them, interrupting the triple winds, triple strings, much brass, a musical revival of the Romantically destructive: their happy shrieks are piped into the Square; the water’s halfway to ice, it opens up everything: like the air amid the airs, this water is both separate and one, both water liquid and water solid, of the ocean and not of the ocean, of the above and of the below. Then, once the ballroom and lobby have been depopulated, they’re deloused further, cleansed more completely, and with better service: they’re remanded to individual luxury stalls, marble, with floors heated, mirrors un-fogging; their pants, shirts, skirts, and panties, underwear, purses, wallets and watches, namedesigner, are left unattended on hooks, socks stuffed into the throats of their shoes gaggingly tied together then piled to one side for the rack expected in a matter of professional expediency: the bellhop’s on it; don’t bother, he’ll pick their pockets for tips. Management Assumes No Responsibility For The Safety Of Personal Effects.

There is an Ocean around Land, there are lands around a Land, there’s land around a village, there’re villages around land, there’s land around towns, there’re towns around villages, there’re villages around hills, there’re hills around a wall: the walls are walls…there are walls inside walls inside, in sediment layers, strata, concreting calcite, limestone hauled up from out the earth then stood on end around the settle. They-who-went-to-the-right, we need a name for them, the Rechts, let’s say, those righteous Righters of way…they’re at the westernwall, the outermost wall of walls, the westernmost limitation of the wall’s because circular infinite limit.

What’s the wall protecting, a Mister Dapper asks; these people, you know these Rechters…they’re always asking questions, to impress the others he asks the Guide in a loud sleepless voice — the inside from the out, he asks, or is it the outside from the in?

The Guide snorts, leads on.

A mensch reels in the ladders from the wall. Impregnable.

This is ritual. Everything is.

There’s an Ocean around Land, there’re lands around a Land, there’s land around a village, there’re villages around land, there’s land around towns, there’re towns around villages, there’re villages around hills, there’re hills around a wall, there’re walls around a city…this is cosmology, davka from dechn: the ether to the Leviathan, to the water to the rock to the angel to the earth; this is the ringing of the rings, the inlaying of the spheres, the way a city circles out like the trunk of a tree, annularly, the annual dendrochronologic decored to decode — and then inside, toward the Square, toward the middle of the Square, the meridian Mittel, a descent down its steps of an immaculate blackness, flanked by two columns recounting two histories both correct though conflicting…there they are, through the winding streets winding around then amid the limitless beauty of ruin, each street perfect in its distress, distressing, a creation impossible for a limited God — down the old Royal Way, the ancient coronation route from the Church in the Square up to the Castle above and there, upon the mountain, the hill, the burialmound, the pagan cinders still smolder, the ancient beheading route from Castle back down to Square one with its Church, at which we crown a new king, again, the son of the dead with whom all of this is now enacted again, reenacted, princely as proper; and we all say, There they are, through the narrowing alleys, the fallen and the narrowed, felled to sewers, drainage ditch, guttering runnel, cleaned now made sparkling bright and doneup in periwinkle, sunshine yellow #3, it might be…over the old masonry, the inlaid memory, cobbled crosses ringing the plinths, past the statues under tarps, too, and their horses in bronze and in coppery marble, through the smaller antecedent squares, kleiner rings, the squared circles squared, these triangulations of the Baroque condemned to fresh life and then, circled, past the tortuous birdcage, rococo’s ornate, in which the king would’ve kept those who’d blaspheme his queen or the princess the same, there past the souvenirshops and the stands, the huddled, huddling, stores, with their windows wellstocked, an inclusive assortment of creditcard decals prominently displayed — there they are, toward the Square, again and again all roads lead to the Square, roamcircling it, triangulating it with wander, inescapable once there and then…into the Square, across its meridian where, it’s been said, a great gnomon once stood, whether a flagpole, a cross, or a crucifix, who remembers, who lives, casting the entire spanse as a dial of the sun hidden by cloud, opposite the low strixed Six that’s the plaguecolumn it’s called, erected again to pierce the night air at halftime, its perimeter plexiglassed, an enclosure sponsored by whatever company or corporation, its pediment replete with explanatory plaques in seven languages, each translation preceded by the flag representing the country in which that language once reigned, long ago.

And we all say, There they are…alternately, hineni; to the center of the Square, to the infinite Square without center and there circling the square within, there they are — facing now the Astronomical Clock, which is the face of the Town Hall, bureaucratically blank, unremitting; Church spires and steeple shadow them, shade between the legs, as third arms — the infinite hands of infinite clocks clocking what time they have left, the too many faces, with too many names…the entire Square rendered a clock of clocks, a confusion — all of them timing each other; many standing and sitting and lounging a lean atop and against the statuary at the base of the Clock, until a municipal livestock inspector, maybe, a hiredhand, like everyone else here who has words and his orders, comes around and yells at them to move on in a tongue forever unknown.

There they are, by the Clock cuckooing every hour on the hour — the Church’s bells on a timer, too, to ring mechanically, every fifteen minutes, the quarters, four times, not much time, not much life.

Nothing left.

The Church itself a bell rung by the clapper of its cross.

There they are. Just one crack, all it takes, one crack more, more like the merest chip in a sett or a cobble, broken — the first imperfection not party to the Land’s ruin perfected, perfecting — and it all falls apart. Goes to pieces. Exposed.

In anticipation of their impending Tour, they adjust their glasses, which have been mandated, and straighten their uniforms, tuck their shirts into khaki slacks, skirts, zip up fleecejackets, and down; walkingshoes comfortable, check, cinch the belt, camera apparatus, no film, not allowed.

What else? The rules…

They await.

They’ve been flown in from cities — from the aeroports of Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas/Forth Worth, Denver, Detroit, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., with flights to those points of international departure from the hubs of Minneapolis/St. Paul, New Orleans, Seattle, St. Louis, Honolulu, and Juneau, having driven or been driven to any of these points of origin from way out in Siburbia, from Longport, Margate, and Ventnor down the Shore, Joysey, from the City by way of those Rockaways Near and Far, these Five Towns, purely White Plains, deepest Scarsdale, easternmost Westchester, the Sleepiest Hollows along the Hudson due north…the liquidation of Central & Mountain, the purge of the West: a utility vehicle parked in a relative’s driveway in Los Siegeles so that they’ll only lose one is the thought…left there until a return that’ll never depart — a lonely unmarried nulliparous aunt driving them out to the facility in her wagon so that they don’t have to take theirs then leave it for whom, a taxi sold for scrap, a limousine junked, masstransit transfers to terminal feet…an extermination without resistance, except with regard to its price; with stopoffs where and for, urination at the Manfred “Manno” Marx Memorial Service Plaza located twenty or so miles outside the limits of Angels, horsefeed and watering at a condemned gas station in Danbury, Connecticut, caffeine, the succor of a last phonecall, a goodbye cry amid the glassed bosom of nowhere, now former, to be filed under “as, previously known,” yesterday’s, to be repossessed by the Affiliated; arrived tomorrow and whichever way at whatever aeroport then waited, soon to miss, everything, routine, ritual, the illusion of the interminable, the long for forever…they wait almost in a suspension, in a Messiah’s slow time, late and latening, in the lagging pace of quicktime, never enough — O never forget, never waste a forgetting: always a people in transit, in motion, on the move, with yesterday’s or tomorrow’s newspapers already to pass the time passing, to waste the time wasting, comics with their bubbles popped empty, glossed magazines, tabloids and rags, other miscellaneous leisure reading material of a let’s be honest fairly unimpressive intellectual level; then, they’re shuttled everywhere, shunted, to places only imagined, voicedover in advertisements, announcements, orders, the Law, dispersed beholden to all conveniences of transit to gates, at which they waited, and wait, patiently laughing at their passport photos, passing them around passing, impatient, waiting, still laughing, waiting to wait — then they left.

An Affiliated bled on fences everywhere, bleeds…a village becomes a town becomes a city, has a Square around a Church around a mensch there, an Affiliated — the others always lived downhill, though, where the sewage flowed to, flows, and everywhere is like that with huge fields between everywheres: a town bombed does not rebuild its Square — all roads there lead to all roads there, road, and not to expectation, a holy vacancy, holying, an empty nakedness, the void, denuded; the Church like an old giant roach, perched atop the head of an ancient snake…maybe the river that halves the town, swallows other snakes, the snakes swallow rats, perhaps, poison becomes poisoned, the snakes swallow plaguecolumns whole, slither themselves into the streets around houses, homes their doorposts once marked now spackled over in reddened black, scales.

It’s easier than ever to enter this city, this station, this stopover; everyone off — and they all have their maps still handydandy with Selected Retail Outlets writ large. There are separate marked gates, each reserved for each and every kind of ingress or egress, rest assured; abandon all hope, but not humor: there’s a Low Gate, for the penitent; here, the entrant or extant must stoop to enter and exit, if exit’s ever allowed…a process of humility, this purely indifferent deference, a making of modest if not an abject denigration; then, there’s a High Gate that’s the source of much controversy; two opposing interpretations obtain: the High Gate is for a pompous entrance, many hold, with hubris, intended for the use of the visiting clergy and for the accommodation of guest Heads of State; alternately, a few say, the High Gate is for the exclusive use of the awed, the obeisant and penitent, and here amid this modesty many have found an unseemly double of the Low Gate, though various mapmachers have agreed that the humility of the High Gate is a stranger, possibly holier, humility than that of the Low: this High Gate is so high; okay, everyone, How high is it…? disappearing into a cloudbank, that an entrant appears almost insignificant in comparison, is made to feel so, is made so. There’s a Wide Gate for a willful entrance, that’s for the young, and the healthy. There’s a Narrow Gate, which is for the intestate dead, who’ll never leave either: here, the entrant must squeeze past the others, with all the others at once (how it’s really no narrower than the Wide, only that more than one person may pass through at any one time), their arms held in, head to chest, must bow through the opening, soulthin, stepping down upon heads, the olden pave of each other’s sick skin.

And then there’s the Tourist Gate, which is incredibly low and high, incredibly narrow and incredibly wide all at once, whatever you want, we aim to please. Next to it, a bocher’s selling postcards imprinted with the likenesses of their parents’ parents’ parents unknown; there’s an older woman in a formless shift, skinned over tightly with one of her own products, she’s hocking tshirts, emblazoned with the slogans and logos of earlier regimes, acronyms who even remembers their alphabets, what’s that say, what’s that mean; there’s a crockery dealer, the tshirt saleswoman’s small, fat husband whose face has a hundred noses, all but one of them buboes: as for him, he’s selling the porcelain of their kin generations dead, commemorative plates, spoons from longemptied, raided, Kitschen cabinets; you better believe their stalls have all the relevant permits, notarized twice. A gaggle of Guides loiter there on the other side of the Tourist Gate, holding umbrellas though the weather’s not yet been scheduled. Sh, the storm’s not until Thursday. What’s your Friday look like. One of them waves to her Group, walks over to them, meet & greet. All the Guides are required to speak at least three languages and have at least three names, or it’s that they all share the same in three languages. Then there’s the language they talk amongst themselves, that and the language of money. Don’t make the mistake of pitying them — they’re all on enormous retainers.

An itinerary schedules the unveiling of monuments to the past — a past none of these entrants ever lived.

Doesn’t matter.

This Tour Group comprises old friends by now, from the aeroport, acquaintances from the plane, and even before: old homes; who sold who a house, a condo, a car whether used or previously owned, who knew who from this Lodge, that fraternity with the handshake to prove, who fixed what in whose houses, who worked in whose office with whom, who was a volunteer for what cause, and then those two what’re their names we met at which benefit for what do you call it…here, though, they only nod, grumble, shuffled exhausted, smalltalked to silence, out of their territory, out of their depth. Here, at the Tourist Gate, they stop, at the line marked a shock of white across the stones; they nod again, shuffle with their papers some more.

An inscription above the Gate’s been inscribed twelve times over again the last who can tell how many centuries, roughly the same words though each time in a different language, until the words took on new spellings, newer meanings, newer words, until even the intent, the message, was inevitably altered.

To what.

One guard’s missing an eye and can invent a spiel on order as explanation, for an appropriate fee, which the two of you can later discuss, if there’s time. On his shoulder sits a songbird: a Kavka it’s called, which is a stealing, gossiping bird, commonly known as a jackdaw, Corvus monedula, a bastard crow, a mutant raven of sorts, popularly referred to as a Halka, or Galka — the winged symbol of the world that would inherit its name, Galicia, a kingdom lost to history’s flight. Silesia’s silenced itself. Ruthenia rerouted. To here. In the socket that once held the guard’s eye, is the egg. In the egg, is the songbird for the next Group. And in the next Group’s songbird, the egg. Who’s singing now. Mingle though, if you can, as they’ve been instructed: do whatever’s necessary, is the idea, but try to seem amiable for the Officials, likable but not too, anything goes, but don’t attract undue attention, unwanted scrutiny, you’ll just hold everyone up; avoid Shibboleths of any kind, memory, remember, smile and be amenable, whatever you say. They line toward the barrier, the wicket just beyond the line. Waiting here, they try to memorize the tattered, torn scripts the Guide’s just handed around, not enough copies for everyone, you’ll have to share, doubleup; surreptitiously, at least they think, they whisper the lines to themselves, those prefaced by ENTRANT — roll the words around on their tongues, a muddy pebble, a common sweet (See — Where To Eat). Their Guide’s explaining everything quickly, muddled what with the passing and handing and folding, the grasping and the practice of whisper: the person desirous of entry would tell the setup, and the Guard would get the punchline; it’s all in the timing. Often, though, and here’s the trick, the tongue that trips many up (trepverter of the guardrail), the Guard would come out with the punchline first, and then the entrant — prospective — would have to be quick with the setup. If anyone fails, nu, it’s okay, acceptable, there aren’t any consequences worse than what’s to come, there can’t be, and, anyway, they’ve all don’t ask how managed to smuggle in money with them, mere sums, a few valuables, too, gifts negligible when compared with what they once could afford but still, trades in kind, plenty, enough: with each entrant failed, the Guard would nod, hymn, then walk back to his house, little more than a hut, on his way pocketing the quote unquote admission fee, to which any gift is to be considered supplementary, knuckling a rash at his scruff. The entrant then must wait as the ritual proceeds.

Within an hour or so, the Guard returns, or a day, says some little phrase to the effect that the entrant’s papers aren’t in order, which is nonsense, of course, but no one’s to panic, this is just part of the ceremony, carefully scripted if to be played lingually loose, each time different. The entrant then protests, politely, yet firmly; the Guard then intimates through shrugs, nods, shakes, wrung hands, finger fiddling accompanied by guttural vocables that something might be done, after all, you’re a friend, about this little mess only if what, a grunt guarded by swallows, if only the appropriate measures and yadda. At this, the entrant is to raise an eyebrow, one eyebrow and only one eyebrow, make sure it’s the right one, though, a left, and that you don’t raise it too eagerly, not too earnestly (they’re being prepped as much to inform them as to ready them scared). The Guard then appears to lose interest, suggesting to the entrant an alternate gate, a referral, only a suggestion that the entrant must, of course, though with less frustration than friendly adamancy, refuse. Then the Guard’s partner, and no one knows why, the guard of the guard, maybe, he’s to suddenly give a loud laugh from inside the guardhouse (don’t ask, I didn’t write the script — it’d been found in two parts atop a mountain slugged Lost) — leaves the hut to approach the entrant and then demand from him or her either a smoke or a light, a sip or a swig…insisting on posing for a picture with the entrant to be taken by his partner, the first Guard, him holding their camera to his eyeless egged socket, snapping them with their arms around each other while the second Guard picks at the entrant’s pockets. Once accomplished, the second Guard, who later will become the first Guard, the negotiator for the next Group, returns to the hut, and the first Guard, who becomes the untelevised good cop as second guard for the next Group, say, pretends to inspect the camera for security purposes, in the process allowing his songbird to fly away with it, its strap in the bird’s beak, toward the sun. Momentarily forgetting his lines, where he was, in the script, in this role, he then again suggests that the entrant might want to try another gate, there’s another gate only right around the corner, a perfectly good gate, just as accommodating, really; as the entrant, who’s by now — or so he or she always thinks, flattering — internalized what they’re supposed to say, how and where and when, getting the feel for this, the idea, yet again insists that no, that yes this is the right gate, the Tourist Gate, right. I’m sure of it. Has to be. Anyway, their Guard says, they’re not allowed in through any of the other gates. Just as well. It’s telling to observe, too, though none do, that throughout their entire encounter no one exits through this Tourist Gate, that no one passes through in the direction opposite their intention. And so it’s only now that the entrant, exhausted, and exhausted, too, of his or her options, searches around in their pockets for their offering only to find nothing’s there, nothing to proffer, not money nor any valuables smuggled, without item; he or she feigns denial then, anger, grief, and blah blah these reasoned excuses, it’s in receivership, escrow, I’ve been robbed, there’s a thief in our midst, as the Guard laughs to his guard, winks a lid over his socket, shakes his head, avoids the hopefully imploring eyes of the entrant by shutting his own one functioning. In time, a week, a moon, the songbird returns to his shoulder, without camera, twittering caw. And an exchange like this — it can last for hours, and often does, an entire day, days…in truth, who can tell as all the clocks are within, and are on their own time; this is how the authorities of Polandland control incoming flow (amid everything else).

Finally, bribeless, moneyless, and only after it’s been endless haggling, accusation, recriminations, a strange sort of compromise is reached, inevitably, but don’t tell them that, don’t let on: invariably, the Guard settles upon an appropriate denigration, an adequate indignity, and so requests as prerequisite to any admission the presentation of a story, a fiction, essentially an additional falsehood, the supplement lie; for example, he might do anything…maybe asking each entrant and always individually to tell him why he or she wants to enter Polandland, for what purpose and how badly, perhaps, to which all replies are equally valid, if they so satisfy the Guard, the only arbiter here, the only gatekeeper around — all replies, that is, except one that betrays circumstances, the true nature of their presence (with forms long filled out, everything signed away, waivered): one that divulges their forced entrance, reveals their future unfutured in its impatience, impertinence, how put out they are. He needs to hear from each of these entrants all about, up to you, it’s your call: their invalid/dying relatives, their family reunions, business engagements, Polandland’s cultural wonders, the absolute necessity of visiting this religious shrine or that historical site; and expecting, too, to hear in reply to his demand however absurd an accounting of lifelong goals and kinderhood dreams, the more creative the better, the more outlandish the more convincing, the crazed and impassioned among them the most effectively entertaining, it’s said; he hopes to hear names dropped, held on to tightly, then let go of, dates and times invoked, of longstanding invitations, of unalterable appointments with specialist doctors or lawyers, engineers, industrial executives and municipal agencies the more obscurely recounted the more valued, the more nonexistent, whether delusionary or merely imaginary, the evermore incredibly received…to hear, too, their whining and crying, to see with his own good eye an ample measure of their begging and mouthgrovel, knee-beseeching, and tears; and if at any time in this entreaty the entrant might fail, falls from his or her identity within the role into an acknowledgement of the lie that’s required, at depth, then entrance is postponed, delayed until further notice, until a more convincing offering can be developed, and delivered, and it must: if you refuse, though, don’t worry, as one’s eventually forced upon you, delivered for you by proxy, in your stead, however embarrassing it is or will be, how shameful, and base. And only when appeased — or delighted, applauding, and laughing, or merely wryly nodding acceptance — will the Guard stamp for you the appropriate document, which is the stub of the admission ticket previously ripped in exchange for the fee originally pocketed upon your Departure, and then his guard, the Guard’s guard, raises for you the barrier of birchwood, the peeled white of the wicket. Only now is the entrant allowed inside, finally, permitted to pass through the Tourist Gate only to wait on the opposite of its portal for the rest of his or her Group. And for hours. For days. Though the ritual’s only begun.

Some find it perplexing, or funny, even, gatesgallowshumorous, but others understand its seriousness, its gravity, and it’s them that do best; understanding that it’s all party to the experience, packagedealed; that what’s required is less an appreciation of the end than of the means by which the end must come to be suffered: what’s important isn’t the moral, which is bankrupt despite, but the spiel by which the moral must be indulged. For the sake of the sake, say. Get in line; stay for the line, too. Throughout, without doubt, and yet with doubt, as well, the entrant must suppress an urge to seek, to turn, over a shoulder, to receive or solicit advice of any kind or kindness, and must also refrain, once passed and waiting again, from offering any advice to those who would follow, to provide them with any encouragement or instruction from what’s only the safety perceived of their waiting area, their line’s muster, its haven hopedfor, designated behind a cordon of columns. As they wait for the rest of the Group, any pride in their passing slowly diminishes, gives way person to person, with each other subsequent pass; a disappointment: by the time the remainder arrive, pass through and wait for their Guide to pass as the guiding umbrella’s inspected for holes, their supplicant stamps are already gone — it’s disappearing ink.

Unprompted, then, they follow the script, though entrance is becoming easier and easier, easier than ever these days, especially once you’re inside…in the earliest days of the first transport, the initial experiments, how Polandland had tried to micromanage, age and height and health requirements strictly enforced; for certain attractions, that is, but not anymore — what’s the use? Lately, all are welcome to everywhere, whether they’re ready or not, preparation or no, they’re forced to a welcome — and now, it’s become not program but pilgrimage, is how it’s put, now that they’re not scheduled but punctually leisured to death, that’s how we like to think of it, anyway; the Gates swung open, rustily, perfectly, perfect in their rust and swing, and everything’s available, save exit, of course. They’ve paid their entrance in eyeteeth, fees in wives and daughters, in family, in fingers and toes; reduced admission for students, and seniors, too, with presentation of proper ID. Many have been wheeled through the eminently accessible Handicapped Gate, steeply ramped. Most are happy to walk. To pay extras, miscellaneous surcharges, the price of exorbitant whim. To sign those waivers, initial here here and here the disclaimers — there’s my X, cross me off, black me out. They replace their wallets under their layers, larval, their varval strata, these personal rings…stuff their documents, too many documents, too much paper, into their shoes for warmth, too many seals, too many approvals. They’re lined through the turnstiles just past the Gate, a distracting concession to the modern; despite the ceremony, an accounting must strictly be made. A record, is meant. A son, too short, underneath the metal arm and so, unregistered; despite, even he won’t survive. Clock strikes Bell, the nest of a cock whose comb is a bejeweled caparison. Crowing. It’s never closingtime. Until. There’s so little of it, time, and O their God there’s so much to do!

In the Cemetery

Here is the Cemetery…a field circumscribed by walls, which are a fence, shot through with gates of its own. The field’s a sharp rise, a precipitous mound, almost a grave itself, unmarked and yet mounting against that anonymity, a natural monument to its own forgottenness, a mess of enclosed earth overgrown not made of layers poured upon layers, which would be like the turned and turning pages of a book, or like consecutive, linear, narrative time, but more like a book whose pages are inseparable from one another, its covers, more like a time that doesn’t proceed forward or back but that stands still subsuming every moment, past, present, and future. Atop this hunch, within it, of and below it, it itself, are its tombstones, the topmost of them lately pulled up straight to stand, reset, like starved teeth, like cuticle parchment, the exposed bones of eggs…becoming pushed in, out, clustered, crowded, dirt-dense, rockthick, stonetight, as if the most impermeable efflorescences of the mound itself, forget weather; of the same material, only its most exterior, and so necessarily hardest, manifestation, that with the most edges, the sharpest against the shaped, shaping wind. Overgrown with grass, weathered to pale, this small parcel of fenced land, this earthen scar allotted for burial — a hump’s wound wanting for raum, for its healing. There will be no further exhumation; it’s not allowed. For them, it’s only the transience of this one walk through, a quick cursory circuit, twisting left, winding right, their eyes trying to take everything in — to mouth to themselves, each other, these names, which are halfheard, which are mispronounced, between their tongue and these teeth: to see the, which is the sound the tongue makes clucked between the teeth; to inscribe them upon their pupils, too, to make gravestones, tombstones, headstones out of their very own heads: stonestones, markers made of wood and of rock, of all different ages and eras leaning on each other, falling for one another, and over, huddled to keep warm in the freeze.

This is one of the very few cemeteries to be found inside walled cities, or so the Guide says.

Most are outside, says the Guide, most were forced outside, had been granted outside: begrudged to them nearby sites of execution, adjacent to carrion pits.

Everyone with me?

Here’s where you wash your hands clean, called the lavabo; don’t worry, we’ll be passing another.

Here’s where you purify, where you ritually guard the body, the corpse, keep watch over and yadda.

Here’s the shed for the funeral coach, the caravanserai’s the term, if you will.

Here the bier, here the common coffin for transport, because…

There, the loom of the shrouds; they’re woven from eyelash, you know…the Guide points with her umbrella, she’s poking.

Here the Sexton’s quarters, the Shammes’, the Cemetery Caretaker’s there. Across the street, the Guide umbrellas — the mason and wheelwright over there then the smithy, turn around, marked on the maps they hold in their hands with their respective guild seals, interpret…here, she says, it’s another lavabo, and so someone finally stops, riffles through his clothing for a camera not yet confiscated (how even the few survivals have been carefully planned for effect), takes a photograph of this relic in silver tarnished, smoky, handled in ivory, austerely no frills, half sunken in ivy, grass, and miscellaneous weed. Suddenly, that blackishbird swoops down out of the sky to fly away with the camera that anyway wasn’t loaded, that didn’t have any film, which’d been confiscated back at the aeroport.

There’s a nest of lenses, somewhere, it’s said.

Here, the Guide says again, the gate for the Priests, opposite the Gate where we’ve entered.

In the beginning, there were slab tombstones, stele, then the tombs with lids like sarcophagieyes, Egypt, if you remember it, then the desert, which’d been tented in rock like a mountain; then a period of double tombstones over a single plot, like another pair of peeled stones keeping watch: husband and wife sharing one earth. Menschs laid to rest under their names, the symbols of their family, their labor, occupations, as they once lived under the signs of their houses: the Cohens, the priests, they were buried in their own section under the relief of their hands, splayed and winged, then a fish, for the Levites, a jug, a dish, a crown and a book, a tailor’s scissors, a doctor’s scalpel, a lawyer’s scales, lions and deer; more birds swooping down to perch atop tombs, crows turned to rock, ravenrock. Dark. Pinch me, the icemensch’s pincette. They approach the inscriptions, wearied, weathereffaced, and they kneel, go to make rubbings with provided materials. One year later, their Guide says, not that they’d live — it’s the consecration of the burial, the unveiling, that’s when the tombstone’s set, placed: at least, that’s the tradition, they’re told, they believe. There, the rabbi’s section of the Cemetery. Here, husbands and wives had been buried separately…over yonder the sections reserved for the suicides, for the murderers further, and then that reserved for the bastards, no more illegitimate than anyone else nowadays. They lay little stones upon all the graves except these, as their Guide suggests, then instructs against their compliance, then for it, resistance, then none, stones, pebbles, gravel obtained from vessels in locations wellmarked, well in advance of their arrival, thousands of years; stones atop stones, they’re burying rock, consecrating memory itself, to itself.

Embrace what you’ve forsaken, the Guide guides, and they’re guided: this is just fascinating…

A trainful of them disembarks outside the Cemetery, about onehundred strong if weakened families with little ones mostly, only a few unattached, singlestoured, apprehensively lonely, unsure whom to beg for their comfort. Among them is Kaye, pale, darkhaired slickly struck down, tall, thin, and alert, impatient to visit the grave here of a fellow insurance mensch, a hero of his from the days of his very first policy. A brother worker in the service of adjustment, assessing liability, a companion in the divine office of limiting risk. Weather’s coming blown so regularly harsh it feels almost manufactured, machined, whips across his face, he squints, slowly makes his way across the street from the trainstop, toward the Gate. A pilgrimage. All those days of scrimping and saving were worth it, he thinks, have to be, he’s convincing, and now that I’m here, I’d better enjoy while it lasts. He heads up his laggard trainload in their march, keeps pace with their Guide who — with an order to them to wait at the gate for their Guide to the cemetery, because here, everything’s specialized — leaves them with a flourish of her umbrella to attend to yet another Group now doing the shuls, which are the synagogues, the houses in which these people once prayed. Hoping silently that nothing should disturb his Grave audience, Kaye’s intending to appeal for an exception, maybe a divine intervention, perhaps his merit for my predicament — even a few sales tips while we’re at it, useful if he would survive, if he could, advice regarding indemnity as if that were a theological issue, a coupla policy pointers. In his pocket, a scrap of paper folded thrice, company letterhead lined with strict, anxious handwriting that resembles the remains of insects swatted, squashed: a message for the mensch in the Grave, it’s a last will & testament, too, in addition to not a few other things; once inside, if inside, Kaye might use it for a yarmulke, a backup, just in case — he’s not in insurance for nothing.

Through the fence streaming its wall from both sides of the gate, through the inkdark smears and smudges of bars, everything muddled falls into focus: a lavabo to the left, a lavabo’s for the washing of hands…then, a vessel filled with tiny rocks ground down to pebbles positioned to the right, those are for placing atop the stones, the stele, the tombs; he’s prepared. Kaye tries the handle to the door set into the gate, tries again, grimaces wrinkles to an appearance older than he’ll ever live, to grow into his face to hide whether a blush or a blanch, turns to his trainload to ask for assistance, meekly, open of palm. Out of nowhere, there’s a mensch. His is the uniform of two wars ago or so that were never reported (who ever knew, the question every Group asks itself), a medal of uncertain insignia weighs as heavily as a head itself, decapitated, scalped to hang its shine from a scrap of ribbon a filmreel strangling a neck that’s scrawny, and mutual; that old sharp beak peeking from a bifurcate beard, one for you, one for him; onelegged, too, he feels deserving, and so he’s demanding an admission fee, supplementary, wordless, with his hands out, a sum additional to that of their entrance, which’d supposedly been allinclusive, extracted from each of them previously. Kaye shows the mensch his armband, reaches an arm through the bars, then, retracting to roll up the other sleeve, his tattoo, glossy with ointment lately applied, and then from his pockets, his documents disappeared of ink, everything he can think of, anything even remotely indicative of officialdom, of payment in full, but the mensch won’t understand, he couldn’t…he scratches his head, hops around in irrritation on the spring of his stump.

Anyway, says Kaye, cemeteries don’t have entrance fees…it only costs when you want to get in and stay in forever, that and a stone with your name on it spelled right, with the date — then a woman, thicklipped, frizzled, adds: they shouldn’t anyway, it’s not right, it’s a sin; we’re going to have to report you to Management. I’m sorry to ask, what’s your badge number, your name?

The mensch nods to second his silence, again shows his hands: tremulant, knurly; he grips the bars with one, keeps cupped the palm of the other as if to save in it weather with which to wash the dirt from his face; the trainload searches its pockets, a sprinkle of lint, as the mensch brings that hand back to pick at his teeth, with the teeth of a huge iron key, kept roped around his gluttonous waist.

But we came all this way just for this, Kaye protests.

No, says the mensch in their language, perfectly, without accent — you didn’t come, you were brought.

I’ll have you know, Kaye’s not listening to him, only to himself and that woman behind, whoever she was, how he’d like to know, that this armband entitles me to entrance anywhere within the borders of Polandland, then he nods admiringly to her, though it’s him who’s blushing. I’m prepared to talk to the Manager personally, he’s threatening, he’s not, if we’re unable to reach a solution.

The mensch lays a hand on Kaye’s shoulder, the shaky arm slung between the bars, with the other pokes at his own stomach with the tip of the key. Have a nosh, he says, a little to eat: you all look so hungry, so thin. Then, come back in an hour.

An hour, the woman asks, disbelief in the twitch of her nose that’s either repellent or enough to snare you for life — do we have that much time?

There are many fine restaurants in the area. Might I recommend one? It’s regional specialties you’re in the mood for, am I right?

Kaye graves his hands into his pockets, kicks a heel into the mud, turns from the gate only after his trainload’s dispersed: only after many have lifted themselves up on their tiptoes to peer over the low falling fence, a few attempting to decipher the inscriptions in an alphabet foreign, in a few alphabets equally foreign, abbreviated then acronymed to unintelligibility, dazzled into diacritics forgotten: acutes, graves, breves, carons, hooks and horns, dots and diaereses…it’s not that they’ll never understand, rather it’s that these invocations will always only make sense to the dead: a readership as obsolete as the language in which they’re left reading themselves — they’ll be literate in no time, give them a night. And yet, a flurry of bicker, of entitled complaint: some whine in hot whispers, others moan, then quietly enough dissipate into silence so as not to offend the sensibilities of Management (who or whatever that is, if undivine, though merciless), their observant Gates, their surveillant trees: the weather, the service, can you believe, the accommodations, the food; then, they go eat.

Their houses are emptied, almost, nearly, of all their valuables, worldly; repositories of remnants lie locked and alarmed: locked against an illimitable force, feebly, foolishly, alarmed against an emergency any response to which can only be probable cause. No deterrent. Nothing can be protected from putrefaction; there has never been any safeguard against taint. A red cancel to blemish the summons. Only open wounds on the tractearth, gashes of infecting possession, festering forlornly in the latemorning sunfrost: food rots in the refrigerator; the fridge and the freezer the twoheaded unit, huge, idolatrous, rots in the open kitchen like an unfilled, welltongued tooth cracked black down the middle of the stinky sink of a mouth that’s told nothing but lies, that’s prayed only to the wrong God for curses. A dozen indentations for eggs on a shelf at eyelevel, empty save unidentifiable stickiness, enspidered. And the refrigerator, the freezer, hums in the mouth, the hum shakes everything loose, rattles fillings domestic: the windows, the shutters, the pantries, cupboards and cabinets their wares flattened out into steps down the stoop toward the slates, the supports, the foundations, the earth below the concrete; and the food rots into smell and the smell rots into room, a wall of smells, walls, a sink of smells, a floor undusted, splotched, dulling, fading, evanescent as dulled, ephemeral as faded, becoming formless as the rot soon usurps, replaces its form: bathrooms of mold, ceilings of fuzz; the siding weathers, blighted cedar shingling (with not even the larvæ or the moths still surviving, whose nests Israel would shoot out with water from hoses, or ash with a torch lit from headlines), the morning newspapers mound on the porches, soak into one great rising page, as the weather weathers itself and the evening editions of newspapers, a mass of wet print blacker than blood: Problem Nearly Solved, says the subhead, Shade to Address General Assembly Meeting of Sanhedrin Today…mail mounds in the mailbox or is held in perpetuity at the postoffice where a few, responsibly, have thought to stop it, ridiculous, too many bills, collection agency notices, magazines, catalogs and bills, always more, always too, unsolicited; lights switch on on a timer, switch off again then again on timers, sprinklers switch on on a timer, switch off, it rains, it pours rain, sprinklers switch on yet again, and then snow; the house settles, the settle settles, the earth swallows the house rotted above deeper down, a sinkhole, a pit; lights switch on with the moon, off with the sun; the keys rest under the welcomemats, a grinding of teeth with the wipe of strange feet; it stops raining, snow, no one shovels, no one sweeps, forget mops — maids have off, depends, or have been brought along, too, attending even in death, tending to the little ones to the end, a last tantrum of breath…sprinklers switch off or are frozen, immobile, the settling of the settle sinks down even more, kneemud then up to the pits, hipwading slime to the sidewalk, deeper the street; grass grows into weeds, unweeded, seeding themselves; telephone rings, machines pick up, a message is left or is not — tears; lights switch off then on again and then off and then, die. A waste of energy, wasted. Affiliated neighbors, many of them let down their shades, will themselves to ignore; an intrepid few gaze out their windows: at the lawns wrecked with neglect, strewn with the rusted carapaces of bicycles, tricycles, left leaves chattering cycles in the spokes of wheels blown onward nowhere by wind — and the oven’s timer, the stove’s watch, someone set for something, it just ticks and ticks, and they tock. Looting wagons, many of them in the northeast, at least, licensed to a certain Johannine familyowned Moshe’s Movers, proud recipients of a government contract courtesy of a friend of a friend — they’re backedup into driveways, they’re being loaded, they’re taking everything left: these schleppers, what aren’t they doing, what aren’t they responsible for; they’re smashing up a last idolette of the Virgin out on the lawn, they’re repoing the samplers, wrapping ornament valuables fragile in tissue, then hauling all of it out; what’s left that the neighbors aren’t holding onto for the hope of return, they promise, it’s just for safekeeping…

There’s an Ocean around Land, there’re lands around a Land, there’s land around a village, there’re villages around land, there’s land around towns, there’re towns around villages, there’re villages around hills, there’re hills around a wall, there’re walls around cities, there’s a city around a Square, there’s a Square around a Church, there’s a Church around an Affiliated — crucified, he’s been nailed up to hold everything in place, keep it together; this is all pointed out to them, duly noted (understand, that if this tour seems somewhat disjointed, appears somehow confused, then it’s been conducted about as well as any could hope: plopped down with a foldingmap with arrows popping sharply everywhichway, and with all these sobbing disconsolate kinder wanting, needing, to do just about everything…his personalized armband slipping down the starve of his sleeve, icecream melting down the cone of his two fingers holding he’s licking, his parents’ patience tested by the whim, the desire, the demand, fedup, wearing thin, what would you expect — he’s been excited for weeks, counting down the days, blacking them off on his calendar, a secular luach, not many of them left nowadays, secreted under his bed he’d countup the hours, the minutes, the clock the beat of his heart, despite how they’d discouraged); the city’s around a Square around a Church around this mensch, you know Him, an Affiliated, too, crucified, starcrossed, the center of every universe at once, and here, too…the city has a Square around a Church around an Affiliated, an Affiliated has the town around, the village, the Church, the Square, the city, the world, their Guide repeating again and again: a formality, memory; like, how many times do you say a Kaddish — before it becomes less than the sum of its words, its vocables and gutturals, just Amen noise, perpetuo static, no summons? Zusammen! The other Affiliated, the rest of them, though — they always lived downhill, turn, point, where the sewage flowed to, flows, the wounds of puddle, perfectly imperfecting scars (manufactured stains populated with ash, louse, and the vomitous remains of seven species). And everywhere’s like that, with huge fields between everywheres, plains: this quarter of Polandland, bombed, incendiaried, blownup, what do you call it — gone, didn’t rebuild its square; all roads here lead to all roads there and not to expectation, road, the nakedness of late night denuding earliest morning — to stand alone amid nowhere, surrounded only by the sacrosanct and furious quiescence of the ancient, made modest only by the light of late noon…at the markets: there in which numbers, for a moment, a bark or a cry, had other meanings; in which hands, so often put to violence, to death, here merely gestured for profit, the satisfying murder of urge, the gross indulgence of an object desired; at the festivalbooths: amid the gurgle of crated livestock and birds, suspended high amid the scent of the tree and the glow of its lights, always lesser. Prosit! Prost! Servus! Rooted in dregs. The Church here an ancient cockroach grown fat in a crack in the sky…a gargoyled snake (maybe the stillborn son of the river’s or river that cleaved the town, that cleaves here from banking flow to ebb of bank) swallows other snakes and islands, the jutting, falling slips, the dilapidated docks, boats and barges that themselves, in their feathered wakes, cut new forks into the snake’s tongue, the snakes’, corrupted limbless without current, to slow the flood of speech, unremitting, the water of words, as if in punishment for unknown, inchoate, sins. The snake of the river swallows rats and the snakes swallow whole plaguecolumns whole. Waters recede into mute twice daily, at noon and at midnight, then silence reigns again — that great holy and maddening still.

During reconstruction, doorposts had been spackled over in reddened night, the mark of where mezuzahs used to mark, when.

Last latest evening the Square gets klieged, shorn and drowned, the ganze obliterate: an oblation of light, beamed pitilessly from behind spires and turrets. Hordes of tourists walk in walking shadows, footed to shade, shuffling, limping, walkingshoes and galoshes, weatherproofed, wellheeled on tank-treads: a Miss Angelica gets herself caught, between two cobbles she trips, falls and sprains herself hurt, that evening to consult with this goy named she forgets who he once posed as a Goldlust, one of the handful of old Unaffiliated lawyers still around if out of practice of late, to ask him about the intricacies of negligence, liability: ideas of suing Polandland, Inc., gosh darn it all to heck, she says to him, while we’re at it why not sue the whole religion, the race, the world, to which the lawyer will have to admit ignorance of international law obtaining, especially now, though he’ll ask her a few questions she should ask her insurance provider should she ever again find herself home and alive. She can’t walk, the Group continues on without her, no one hears from her again, not a postcard. Here to make the circuit across the water to the Castle, house roomed to house from Square to Bridge felled — not the trafficked bridges where the cars would swerve to avoid the trams, where the trams would stop to avoid the horses, where the horses would throw riders over the railinged edge to avoid trampling the lowlier passing: but the pedestrian bridges, the historic crossings no vehicles allowed, the oldest spans, of ancient arches, their ways lined with statues, of saints and others, the saintlike, the sainted, the saintly, those beatified and still waiting bruised with rust in the purgatory of holiness, Salve; St. Whomever who died whatever death, who knows or should, St. What’s his name or hers who they were martyred together in each other’s arms for something under the reign of another. Polandland, Inc. knows they’re in mourning even if they don’t, and so Management’s gone and covered the statues of the Bridge, and those of the lit and touristed Square, too, with these flattering red tarpaulins: untenable to let those old Saints out alone into unsupervised night, to grant them the honor of a moon, who knows what miraculous madness they’d get into, what they’re liable to do damagewise; crosses and swords, crossed swords bulge out from under their coverings, Cupidic arrows and roses of silver and bronze. At night, the Bridge’s statuary, like the Square, shot through with a bright river of light, an air luminous and rare above the dark river flooding below. Here on the Bridge, there’s the miraclerub, that in the light, be it that of the sun, moonlight, or artificial, flashed from the bulbs hidden behind the statuary plinths, shines more golden than anything else. A handful of stragglers lift the tongues of these tarps, to get a glimpse: how they’re turned to stone, into statues themselves to bridge high the banks, above the rocks that fork quartered the flows: uncovered, they’ve beheld eyes without pupils, faces without noses, cut off to spite, torsos unlimbed, dismembered by weather; swordhands of St. Who Knows holding tulips wilting and yet petrified, frozen, fists with macle for knuckles, or jewels, their emptily suppurant settings; a starveling dog with a mouthful of genitals prowling still at the feet of St. Anyone bound in crystalline vein. The plinths, the pediments, which are left uncovered and so visible to everyone, haven’t weathered well either, hundreds of years of thousands of precipitations would do that, and worse; as always, words are easier to efface than the fame that is form. A few, though mostly the clerical crowd, stop to make themselves rubbings of the fundament Latin, which is inept, terrible, an imported language of no one now, having been churched out of existence, its conjugations scattered, and muddled, frozen then thawed into incoherence, again — epitaphs to the stone itself, themselves…here lies, here lies

Through the Employees’ Gate, which is less a gate than the secret weedy mouth to an underground tunnel to probable sewers, the catacombs, the basement bodied in the form of the worms that once sustained themselves on their filth — worryingly late in punching in, Peddler and Wife of Peddler make their hurried way through the tunnel to its terminus: a gutter’s cover just beyond, a grating, heft it and descend fast down a ladder then down that passage through to their respective prep areas, there to wash, appropriately dirty and then uniform themselves as quickly as possible, to avoid being reprimanded if not penalized, having any fine deducted from pay. In their personalized lockers, all their worldly possessions — in this world: all the accoutrements of their trade, which is peddling whatever’s to peddle, husband & wifing, they’re peasants, they’ll do what they’re told. In the M’s for Mensch’s area, everyone’s already arrived, prepped and ready to work: boker tov this daily briefing…these rabbis and priests, these lepers, the schnorrer and shylock and solicitous shtadlan, a merchant and shochet, a baker and a candlemacher, this taperer who he’s also a careful eggcandler, the latter three fumbling still with the strings to their aprons. Tie me up, doubleknot, thanks. A calendar’s confirmed by an announcement over the employee PA: Plague’s scheduled for tomorrow at 1400, then a flood, to be followed by famine, next Thursday at 0845; next week, advance notice…gevalt a pogrom — Friday night, you’ve been warned. An old regime, the previous Management, which had been aged, morbidly obese, had fallen, on any last rung or step that itself was a wall, an ironcurtain; they’ve been exiled out, in favor of these pretenders, impersonals, who are only the usurping real, those who hold the true birthright to this nowhere, lately corrupted in the service of money, its pursuit and ambition, we’re just hustling, getting ahead in the newest of worlds spinning around and so fast there’s no ahead, there’s just now: the Peddler’s parents today earning more as farmers who don’t have to grow anything than ever they’d eked out as real, true farmers who really grew, for subsistence, for the good of the State…Peddler’s Wife’s mother lately working nights in a glass factory, huffing souvenirs until her lungs would give out; they once remembered, though only vaguely, and not anymore, a property once owned, that’s still owed them (but how lately they don’t have much to complain about: they’re working, finally free, how life works — made employees of existence, hired merely to be, to breathe their own native air, paid to stand around wherever scheduled and scratch, to putter around plots, to peddle itchy of finger, though stomached with guaranteed salary, door-to-door-to-door through the hotels, around their lobbies and pools). Mayor’s an excellent position, wellpaid, though the Mayor’s also the municipal Treasurer, the Second Assistant Poultry Inspector on alternate Monday afternoons, a Sunday Horse Trader, a Thursday Horse Thief, though during Carnival Time (dates vary, spring) he’s assigned to the rear of the pantomime, the equine tush, you do what you can, all the best. Horses, the real ones, here they’re mostly just showy, they don’t have to work much: they’ve been trained to neigh on demand, and when they drop, and O how decoratively they drop, out of nowhere ride the hostlers and a stable of squiring grooms, many of whom are by now too old for this work (most of the native young have already left, or — disappeared; it’s all about innocence, that of their memories: as youth’s too painful and blushing, it doesn’t reproduce so well in black & white, official colors of the frontoffice); despite their age, then, despite their knees, spines, and their ridiculous shortpants, buckled shoes, tricorner hats and flounced cravats, how they’re uniformly quick to cleanup.

Are you following, the Guide asks, any questions?

How [much is this]?

How [much is] this?

How [much] is this?

As you can imagine, everything’s been thought out well in advance, all problems have been solved for them, already — save that of language, which is unthinkable, which is unsolvable, irresolvable, what, I don’t know the word…

Good Morning/Good Day [afternoon]/Good Evening/Good Night — excuse me, do you observe afternoon…afternoon, can you say afternoon, can we say that — is there even any afternoon here?

No speak __________________

And no light.

A resolution, though, has emerged: it hasn’t been offered, only recognized, and in public (it’s been around since the very beginning). It’s money, many say, that money renders language meaningless, makes it peripheral if not unnecessary, for the pleasure of purists alone. Money speaks for them, for us, more exactly and more fluently than does anything else. No speak, pay me. I don’t understand, I’ve busted, gone broke. Here, the stores for the Tourists are invariably small interests, smalltimed husband and wife handlers their shopworn concerns hustling a double as restaurants and drinking establishments, extensively understocked: ten or so dusty cannedgoods, their provenance as obscure as their contents, if any contents at all, spaced at uneven but you can bet (a gambling parlor’s in back) exactly surveyed intervals along the rickety shelves; whereas stores for the Employees, invariably tenanting underground, are stocked like you couldn’t believe, with the newest merchandise imported available, the shiniest and most desirable that their new paychecks could ever afford. Browsing on their way back to their hotel (which is in a building formerly known as the Castle), the Lays are ignored by the Employees they pass, and those they’re actually scheduled to encounter as they pass, ignored except for the latter’s encountered litany of approved snide glances, appropriately angry sneers, willfully obscene textbook gestures, an entire repertoire of unspoken derision (in passing). I [want to purchase] this, phrasebooks Misses Lay holding up something or other, and the shopkeeper laughs: everything’s for sale except that’s what he means, and so she picks up another object, yet another thing selected and she waves it around; everything’s for sale except that, too; there are currencies within currencies she soon realizes, languages within languages, and misunderstanding abounds: anything you want or need is exactly that that’s not available, if only today; tomorrow might be different, come back then; feign disinterest, pretend disgust; anyway, who has the money or time. As they leave, out past the slovenly benched menschs and wenches employed to smoke and drink the day down — in a frenzy of folkdress, every national costume conflated: ledered in hosen, dirndled in tracht, alongside sarafans and kosovorotkas — they’re saluted from across the unlit space with toasts and flicks of ash that might be mocking, or vernacular love; to sidestep the owl feaked on a gauntlet left by the end of the bar, pecking at the foam of a beer or on the crumbs of a sausage or roll; to wind their way around a miniature bear, the bartender/shopkeeper’s pet, unmuzzled and up on two legs standing to beg for another shot, just one more, on a stool of only one leg, which falls from underneath it for the animal to gnaw planks from the floor — it’s a rug now…then, finally to nimble over the Drunk, passedout in the doorway, mind your step, and how he’s the Mayor, too, whom they’d forgotten they’d met just earlier in yet another capacity.

Outside, their Guide gathers them together again, then leads on: a lot nextdoor, in which neighbors are employed to argue goodnaturedly, next to a lot in which neighbors are employed to argue not so goodnaturedly: they’re each selling the other their daughters, their wives, their wifedaughters with breasts like umlauts over buttocks like vowels, they’re uxoriously unloading, renting out the loving labor of their tractorhorses, leasing that of their avuncular sons; the Lays are hurried past (they’ll be late even for their strongest reservations, is why, hold my hand), the Laychocks, the Laycocks, the Laycox, the Laydens, and Layes, and whoever L’s else as their Guide persists in umbrellaing out sites of a General Interest, often not as much providing information as merely reciting the facts to them directly from plaques: everything’s been labeled, of course, every property, every house, shack, field, outhouse, destabilized stable and nationalized fence, every square and alley and courtyard, every brewery/winecellar, smithy/whorehouse; there are donation plaques on just about all: This Tub Was Donated By Rabbi & Rebbetzin Mordechai Rockafella; This Trough, and yadda; This Fountain; This Pump; This Bird (oy, so they put a plaque on a familiar bird, flying low) Has Been Donated By The J.P. Morgen & Rabinowitz Co.; everything fixed up, reinforced, all foundations set firm, all gloss removed, then reapplied, glossedover again, two coats, thrice colorless now, façades restored, insides dusted with dust, aged to a perfect decay…

Onto the Castle, impressively converted, remade a hotel, five yellowstarred. At their arrival, the Sandersons’ suitcases are ported up to them: up the hill, its stairs spaced widely for the hooves of horses hauling around the slope; these mounts mounded high themselves, humping duffels and trunks over such prettily landscaped terraces — the other luggage is on wheels, though, and tiedoff to the tails of these rides, such a racket…stepping over the bridge over the moat then into the courtyard where baggage’s offloaded for staff, who burden it up a staircase unwound, torn open to the elements, flush with slush; up one ripped wideopen turret of twelve piercing the sky without flag (though it’s already too dark to be sure). A bellhop takes his tip, a weddingring, hers, splits it setting and stone with the concierge who’s informing on him. Rooms are pleasant, airy; taxidermied trophies antler over the kingsized; everything’s been prepared, immaculately: marble scrubbed, galleries gleaming with polish.

It’s charming, Mister Sanderson says out on his balcony, facing the city cankered below. He’s slowly understanding how to be guided: Charming, his wife’s pronouncement upon arrival, she’s right — he can’t fault her, just follow. Polandland, despite itself, its history, the appleweight, the wasting welter of years, seems untouched, lit from an initial lapse, the first Gardened Fall: everything in a gorgeous state of disrepair, slow decomposition, almost organically, as if it’s living with him, breathing within him, to soon breathe no more, soon to die…it goddamned better be — charming, Mister Sanderson says in his throat, know what I paid: the most expensive accommodation in town, nothing less for his honeymoon, theirs, his wife inside, his relatives already asleep next door then across the hall (the grandparents will have to cope with courtyard views, sorry). Mister Sanderson flicks snow from his parka, returns to his room to lay himself out on the bed like he would tomorrow’s outfit, next to his wife, who’s under the covers snuggled with a leaflet found in a drawer of the nightstand.

What’s so interesting? he asks her, on our honeymoon, too, darkened above and in appearance less honeyed than milked of its meaning, more like a coin with which to call home, her family who’d converted, parents, they’re always (worried) awake…but her, she’s already asleep, and he’s exhausted just thinking of waking her: they’ve done so much today, so much more to do, too, not enough, and tomorrow, if that. He kisses her on each eyelid’s veil, lifts the leaflet from her hands, it’s a menu: roomservice, it offers, and him thinking why not, a surprise; he picks up the receiver, dials 0, it’s picked up, put on hold with Mendelssohnian muzak, he’s picked up again then quietly orders a Wedding Night Package, For One, advertised as You’ve Never Known So Romantic A Special—and please, he asks, do me a favor, knock soft. He rises to throw water on his face, on his return to the bedroom goes to make sure his passport’s still with him, in his pants pocket like always, expected, he’s nervous, it isn’t, remembers: how they’d confiscated it earlier, that and their marriage certificate. He sits down in a chair that’s older than wood, Louis the Worst King its style, worries himself removing his shoes amid a sagging of joints. Then, an attendant knocks, opens the door himself, wheels in a live carp in a flute of freshwater set alongside a flask of VSOP, mashke, it’s what they call whiskey, their brand; he raises a finger to his lips as the aged attendant wheels the fish directly to the clubfooted tub, knobs the water on cold then emerges to hand him a knife, handlefirst. Mister Sanderson rises to tip him his ring this time, and their last; the attendant shuts the door slowly as Mister Sanderson turns, trips over the luggagerack, falls over himself toward the wardrobe, opened, his grasping hands falling hangers a heap to floor. Star, how she sleeps through anything. Bless her, he’s crying. He sits in the chair again, straightbacked to attend to the flask, nips this abstainer (fresh habits, fresh fates), shuts his eyes to think of her not lying here but standing alongside him again, though not gowned, unfortunately veiled with his slicker, the ceremony at the aeroport’s chapel and there its bargain chaplain who didn’t know Jesus from the schmuck who’d betrayed: thinking, too, there’ll be other nights, not many of them, they should pray, not if it means waking her, though, and so he goes to turn on the television to maybe divert himself with the image, its mute, haven’t lazed with one of these in a while, and suddenly how there’s this vast mechanized voice, arrived in their room as if an angel unmodulatedly manifest, hearken the shrill revelation of its graceless announcement: Polandland Is Proud To Offer Its Guests Two Wake Up Options Polandland Is Proud To Offer Its Guests Two Wake Up Options Polandland Is Proud To Offer Its Guests Two Wake Up Options Polandland Is; he turns the thing off, picks up the receiver again at 0 and waits through the Purgatory of organswelled Hold to order a rooster for 0700, wondering if it’s early enough; there’s so much to do, so little time, and let us say — Amen…amen.

Tourists are only required to attest to the Land, to acknowledge its place in memory proper, once lost since regained through that loss: destruction destined from the beginning of creation, which itself came from an ever greater destruction…no, what’s only required’s their presence, that and their money, nu, always welcome, admission with interest compounded every hour on the hour after sunset for those who might choose to sample the night-life that only gets going after Curfew (it’s rumored — with appropriate permit, which is unobtainable, that and a notarized letter of transit offering safe conduct to the bureau at which such permit might be denied, if they’re open, if ever), admission advertised to guilt as a reparation, or restitution — this debt owed, snowed collected, their lives, sunk static in sleep, which is white without dream: surveillance’s offering a vision of blue skies over blond. And then — as if on the timer of the divine, here it is, your personal rooster. Cawing crow. A blood dawn — the sun’s desecration of its host, the horizon. As if to remind him, Mister Sanderson checking, consulting the itinerary printed as the front and only page of Polandland’s daily and only newspaper, punctually slipped through the draft of their door: it seems a Libel’s scheduled for 0900, hymn…which well’s long been mapped — they have two hours to kill, if you’ll pardon…though slicha’s what they say, meaning zeyt moychl.

On the Sabbath, no one’s allowed in, and on no day is anyone allowed out.

Take it easy, enough.

On Weekdays and Sunday, everything’s open dawn to dusk, beyond that into smoke into air (on request), that’s long been explained: how the Groups revolve, depart for their selected schedule by times TBA, how it’s all always repeated again…but of course, the Guide goes on, during the day, regular opening hours, there are still a handful of places, just a few, really, designated offlimits; this is for your own safety, please understand; we’d hate for inquisitiveness to interfere with your experience here: certain cafés and libraries, that theater and concerthall, this park, this garden, this phonebooth, that bench, the westbound monorail, then the monorail eastbound, too — whatever you’re unsure of be sure to ask, of yourself. Those aren’t noted on the map, of course, avoidance is up to them, rather it’s a basic measure of selfcontrol, curiosity’s suppression, a modicum of delimitation’s denial; it’s up to their paranoia, we’re saying — and as long as we’re at it, their Guide repeats herself quickly, there’s one last rule you should know (contingency comes when it comes — how we all have to keep inventing maniacally to keep up with the real); this the most important, keep it in mind: you are not allowed not to have fun, she brightens for this, but artificially, you’re not allowed to not enjoy yourselves, or at least learn from this, an education, explore us, discover yourselves. In the script. Remember, we’re here for you. Ask us anything. Except that. It’s experience’s absolution, it’s wild. Total immersion. Meaning, a mess. Also, strangely, but this they’d been told at the facilities before being mustered to the aeroports, then off: all species are welcome in Polandland, your pets are ours; except dogs, they’ve been explicitly forbidden, though certain streets have been littered with their droppings, dreck wedged smeared between cobbles, at many doorways, too, atop specified stoops, and barking’s to be heard at all hours of the day into night: apparently, Management has their turds imported from overseas, and employs specialized droppers to secrete these foul piles throughout Polandland during the darkest hour of sleep; reel-to-reel barking’s piped in as well — and in wells, down and distorting, up from a gutter of speakers also occluding the mouths of every statue, reverberant under every sewergrate, a low rumble. And finally, so that nothing should distract: smoking’s actually encouraged, and snuff, too, pinches of tabak handed freely around, as is imbibing from open containers of overfermented kvass, vodka, slivovitz, an assortment of schnapps widely available, vice included in the price, that on their immoderate heads — in public, whenever, whatever you want: l’chaim, l’chaim, you’ll probably need it.

Once deloused and uniformed for the day, the Sandersons walk a botched hip downstairs together to the Castle’s courtyard then toward the Banquet Hall, to break their nightly fast in the continental style, with free refills on hope, coffee or tea with your choice of juice. An hour later, they make their way to the lobby, to join a handful of others just waiting around: some are with kinder, some are with parents, others are parents and kinder themselves; they’re flipping through pamphlets “evilly communicated” (badly translated) on purpose, stapled reams listing optional offerings, a candlelit tour of the catacombs, a river booze cruise late afternoon; some are talking, others asking yet even others to take images, initiatory in the mysteries of what to press where, the button click when and then, wind: not that they’d ever have the opportunity to develop these photographs, movies or memories, to share them with loved ones, in slides, projected upon eyes and their livingroom screens — to mount them in albums, framed on the wall or for the mantel shelf in the hall, pass them down generations and further, but again maybe it’s only an initial record that matters, only the semblance they’re after, the image of image.

Of course, no one has film.

To begin, is only to begin again: they’d often lived scattered amongst the Others, interspersed among the general population, sometimes in houses Otherowned, never their homes, oftentimes forced into an exchange, though it’s explained that’s only when they’d been allowed out, allowed to mingle, to mix: emancipation, the Enlightenment, you’ve heard of it, I’m sure, read the thick books under thin covers amid the springs of your lives — a great flinging open of doors, an airing, we’re talking…when some left, many purchased houses and businesses, too, on the Square, becoming assimilated, intermarried, became unto others; though that’s not what the Sandersons want to do, not what they’re wanted to do, that’s not in the Schedule today’s what they’re told: not enough local color there, no flavor for the bud of the tongue — they want In, the clusters, the cloister…O follow the shivering river! the thaumaturgical thatching of roofs, their walls below a blessing for the prevention of breath, before falling: the Ghetto, is meant, and soon, in a matter of steps, there they are — a narrowed network of streets, the grid of Diaspora, the matrix of Exile left. Are we there yet? Is this it? What about this?

One more street, one last step — here we are.

Many times a city would have two ghettos, says Miriam though I don’t think that’s her real name.

Whatever, she their Guide.

If there were two, she says, they’d be situated at opposite ends — at the limits, we’re talking walls within walls…

How do you know? asks a Mister Johnson, where’s it marked?

And Miriam umbrellas to the Gate they’re just passing — unknowingly — through, higher and lower and narrower and wider than all.

Here, she says, there, this was the boundary, the border, this, the limen, the threshold — in one world out the other, you with me, keep up…

Now, if you’ll just follow me.

Often in the absence of a gate, she says, you’ll encounter wickets, relatively unobtrusive, or a highwire strung across the street at the height of first floors.

One step more, one last step.

Here, houses are less houses, lesser, Mischlinge, miscegenetically mixed to impure; more like piles, like heaps burnt to cinereous pyres, uncertified mud-mounds of lowest class dirt, weathered by interracinate winds into unpedigreed tumbles, sloshing around, slipsliding about without concern for any code or hygienic legality — they swallow each other, consume even the bloods at their jambs: how there’re no doors, only open mouths here, or their sores, and these doorposts, they’re marked by remove…an outline, an indication, thereupon the edict, Nur für who else, such a mark, the contagion of Cain — down the well, the slither of the street’s scaly tongue. A gurgle rising, all’s poisoned, all’s locked. These streets of ringing streets ring ever outward, spinning each other on orbitally through graben and platz, spiraling Altstädter Ring into the Neue…a viper’s nest, a spider’s nodeglobe — to the left, an umbrella poking holes in history’s story, wind: a synagogue, say it along with me now, I’m saying a Shul…adjacent to that a prayerroom, repeat after me, Shtibl, established in a private residence after a fire extinguished the original synagogue, which now stands again, Ner Tamid: This Synagogue Was Reconstructed Thanks To The Generous Support Of the Mister & Misses Ronald McJackson-Schmackson-Abramoff, In Loving Memory Of Their Parents olev hashalom, their Foundation…a yeshiva, sunk to the depth of a mikveh, a community center, a Gemeinde, an Obec, HQ of the local Społeczno, a kahal or kehilla; their expectations reify, manifest themselves in the particulars, like worms there they root, there they rot, they’re severed, they’re quartered: in the Record of the records room, the slanted inked lines of the shelves, the smeared invitation to fire that is the study, the file of volumes, the ranks of their learning, to be annually purified, repristinated into the function of a winter sanctuary that went up in flames, only a season ago (the smaller Shtibl or Klaus, for when all freezes, like now — it’d also served as an auxiliary prayerroom for the High Holy Days, which are Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, followed by the Day of Atonement, Yom Kipper’s its name), its ashes to be scattered unto the air — Tephramancy, or so Miriam says, everything has a name, everything to its name — for purposes of prophecy, forbidden as of the failure of any attempt, even yours; to follow the footsteps inked on the stones, dripped in wake, progress the tactic of smear, to follow their dark for the rest of their lives, footprints slaved on one shoe only, often half a shoe, soled with rock: they serve as the touring routes, the sequence of sequence, the sequence of Once — the Hospital, next, and then next to it, the Home for the Elderly, the infrastructure of the indomitable spirit (so easy to celebrate, when all the rest goes to corpse): here are your young, there are your old; here are your healthy, there are your sick; next to that the Ceremonial Hall, the Burial Hall whatever you want to call it, you call (Miriam, she hates their languages, spits them with spite the seven she knows), the place where the bodies of the deceased were prepared, had been purified, guardedover, then next to that through the night, the Cemetery itself…there between those cerementally façaded outbuildings: Ceremonial Hall, the Cemetery, then the Carriage House, let’s not forget, a caravanserai it’s called commonly, housing the bier, the communal coffin, falsebottomed: no way out, and the only…how we’re buried only in the bodies we live in; she nods across the street, in the direction of any salvation — the Goldsmith’s, adjacent to his son the Silversmith’s, then his son the Tinsmith’s nextdoor, whose daughter’s husband he’d worked up the road at the Mill in the employ of his uncle, whose…a wide arc of her umbrella, it’s familytreehandled, canopycutting, encompassing all and their kinder in shade: the Watchtower, the watchtowers, then the further walls, their gates, beyond, the world entire and furthest…then back again in a sweep, a swoop of its plume unfurled, its sharp ferrule piercing at hearts, open up and bleed for me, can’t you — toward the Square’s center, again, which is the core of it all, as Polandland entire’s the center of the Land, of the earth…the pole of the pole’s and, too, the fundament of the whirlwind, the indwelling of the presence and the fall of the numinous veil — what do you say, you’ll get the footstool, and I’ll get the throne…I’ll meet you back at the hotel by supper, I swear. Then, back again toward the edge of the Mittel, the margin, the vale in its paling: the Ghetto’s square, which is smaller, lower, and narrower than, almost a miniature of the Square, the Square-Square, she means, as if fit for the dog of a king: the court-god, the lawyervizier, the jestering doctor or the traveling bard…toward the houses they owned altogether there, had been married into here, were born into here, died out of there, become centered in huddles around courtyards, communal; then, within this middle’s edge, this shoulder shrugged or hemmy fray, and toward its own center, centering, a shard of but whole, a reflection, say, or an imitation or satiric parody of and yet intact again, as whole again, theirs — ruined replete with its synagogue, its Great Shul, the Grand Shul, the High Shul, the Low Shul, the Old-New; its entrance humbling their shamble down a stairwell the steps of which and its wall are of headstones, mortared in memory: repeat after me, a shul is a synagogue is a shulagogue, a temple is what…

Miriam the Guide with her Group passing these houses also used as shuls and as shtibls, as places of worship, as corners of worship, as worshipnooks, or prayercracks, please notice — how their roofs sag under worries, stooped under the weight of the heaven the weights of the heavens their septenary sum; past the houses sagging under their roofs: thatched, timberframed, Miriam says, unframed, like here without door…knockknock, this poor quality wood, wormwood, turdwood, rotboard this collapse: these houses stoopshouldered, with no door in their doorways, openmouthed, how they’re gaping, stairtongue, step the buds, what’re they saying, calling out sore whose name or the wind through their windows shattered though shut under lids of dust under lashes of wind and dust shattering blindness, fever, and hunch; sgraffitod façades scumbled to innards, viscera, a decomposition from without to within as ashes to ashes to…Miriam the Guide with the Group, with her next Group, the Group always next, how she staggers them forward they’re staggering ever forward on over the Land — sagging under the weight of the houses humpbacked, so burdened they follow the passage parsing southwest toward cool noon, slowly manage the wide street, which is actually named Wide Street, which intersects Narrow Street (never doubt home’s street names again: how the Market’s on Market Street, the Synagogue’s on Synagogue Street, the Cemetery’s on…no, it’s on Butcher’s Street, sorry, named for the shop at its end — got you there, you’ve got to stay on your toes…ten, the quorum hoard of your wandering feet), which leads into and out of the Ghetto, leading them into and out of the city itself, the village, the town, Polandland’s proper limits coming toward the Square now as Wide Street as it widens itself into the Square that’s called a Square even though it’s a circle, and then — it’s enough: a street storelined, its Square shoplined, too, overpriced, why not splurge, it’s over so soon; and then, only a block more…a few blocks beyond the Square, north, east, if here there be blocks, even (grid superimposed upon grid, cycles atop cycles, clocking, a staggering mumble of settle after all’s razed to very foundations, then rebuilt to fallover again), Long Street, Short Street, she leads group after group, guides group after group after group, umbrellas them and herself from the wind and the rain and the snow a few steps more just a step, and it’s darker, quieter, it’s…a Quarter, says Miriam, this is a Quarter — shush silence, isn’t it heymisch? though Polandland’s been divided into many more than mere fourths…though the streets might’ve been straightened out (like one might shake out a sheet, wave out a tablecloth in preparation for a bridegroom’s banquet, the chatanchazzan’s drinkwindy, unwitnessed tisch), by the best efforts of what we call modernity, of an involved government and public goodwill, there are still traces, in the way their feet want to walk, in how their hands need to reach to touch and to hold, of the older ways and the winding ways, the natural course of decomposition, the unchanged change of decay leftalone, gnarled spines, splintered ribs, streets ghosting their own olden roads through newer guesthouses, deadroutes trod heavy through livingrooms, deadrooms, and over a light sleeper a stumble then out through their wardrobes, empty, the walls.

At the border, here, the bruised, bloated joint, perpendicular to — the Quarter seems to genuflect to the Square, prostrating itself at this estrangement of knee, this arterial way…Wide Street intersecting Narrow Street, only to become on its other side Ghetto Street’s its name, set apparently straight, with regard to the lean of its living, though with an underlying windingness bisecting the clocked circle surrounding with the secret of its holier, unhanded time — to flow its river of homes, rushed people and the livestock they resemble into an opposite street, bounding, containing, River Street it’s called far toward the back of the Quarter, unwalled to tumbledown at their intersection in neglect, to decay; there to bridge with its loosened cobbles the most polluted swell of this river, whatsoever its name if it isn’t just River, formerly Water: this is the world, roundsmall or it was, and how everything they’d want or need, everyone they’d ever know, would exist inside its circumference, had been encircled in bondage, encycled, bound up in one; this tightness, the throatconstriction, the dizzying breath of containment, overwhelms many, all, the market, the marketed package…and so Miriam takes it upon herself to assure: what you’re feeling is normal, to be expected, and them, this is fascinating stuff…O I didn’t know that, did you, honey, I didn’t — reassured as she guides them, whichever them, with each group the same, these undifferentiated, unindividuated, up shortcuts, switchbacks long around, as handeddown father to son, generationally hand to mouth, dor l’door: mouth to ear, out of mind to its foot in through the alleys and courtyards, Baroque culs-de-sac, rococo loops, maniacally fine and fripperant turns…

We’re heading back to the Square now, says Miriam, for the clock…about to ring us the hour.

You shouldn’t miss this!

A mustdo — is everyone ready?

Let’s all stick together. As much as she sticks to the script.

No use getting to know them, Miriam, no use to even think of them as them — and not just as It, the riveredabout.

And so to begin again, again then all over.

An Affiliated bleeds in a bleeding memory, wilts in a willing memory — dies in a dying memory…dies.

In the Square

The Sandersons arrive in the Square, having passed through innumerable subsidiary squares on their way, through intersections intersecting pedestrian malls, through stretches of municipal openness buttressed by statuary and somber monuments to the most important who cares (Miriam’s stretching, herself — and the feet, they hurt so), that, too, and the Ghetto’s constriction, the poisonous suck, the thin wick through which passes the hour’s glass sand — arriving finally in front of the Clock, just moments prior to its sounding the knell of our noon in twelve tones, halved hollow. Here and waiting, they behold the Tree, which they’d previously known only in photographs, from films, promises, descriptions of print and the mouth; how it fulfills all expectations, exceeds in that it’s “simply fabulous,” though “amazing” is preferred (upon the forms they’ll later fill out — help us help you to force you to fill: our trip was amazing, we had an amazing time, everything was “simply amazing”); earlier, they’d toured another tree, the other Tree, rooted in a lesser as mirrored square rooted across the river from this square, the Main Square, Old Town’s, that’s the New’s: the tree here’s watered larger, it’s historyswollen, greater, obviously the more important of the two trees, the most, they didn’t have to be told after all — despite, even its plaque’s larger, more luminously polished; as for its ornaments, the other tree can’t hold a candle…

Here, everyone holds an umbrella.

This is the openedwide heart of everything, and everything is around this, in pulse — around the Church that is, its cruciform insides, and its Affiliated, its mensch, his own heart almost too open; its death. Mister Sanderson fusses with his jackets (slicker over nylon windbreaker, in layers), a zipper’s caught, he struggles to find the catch, zip himself up again against the bleat of the cold. Of course, Miriam says, many cities, many towns and villages have not rebuilt their Squares. All roads there lead to all roads there and road, not to expectation: the early morning/late night nakedness of a Square, paved with — how do you say, she asks herself, gnaws a lips, for their edification, how you say — tongue, that’s it, that’s the language, that it paves with bare rotted tongue, its buds suckling toes, buds roiling underneath toes, boiling, burning…keep moving, step on: the whole Group’s more pillow than head this morning, the wakeup cock had cawed too early for most, betraying, cuckoo; they’re overwhelmed, too much of not enough, sites of time, landmarks timemarks timelands, monumental disasters erected to this battle, this fire, this burning, whose auto de fé tragic death. Advertisements on the martyred façades, have been pasted over windows, nailed over doors or wherever doors should be, should’ve been they take paper for things, offer things for paper (the only falsity here, or one of the only: selling souvenirs, they’re recommending purchases if only to spite), signs & wonders ask for paper with number, with numbers, paper with faces and face; pay their way out of death’s debt, is the thought, using as guarantee the images of their executioners famed. This way, this way. Mind your step, mind your pockets, your mind, your personal possessing possessions. The Sandersons with their Group pass under the Tree, heldover for them cheerbright, starry and twinkling, toward the Clock’s clocks and their toll as exacting as promised, leaving behind them a husband whose nobody knows, maybe not even him; standing high on the exposed roots of the growth, leaning against its trunk to search for his wife, whomever’s if not already a widow, the Law orders him off, nightly takes him away, he isn’t seen or heard from again, his wife either, if ever she was. A shocking bustle of black forms as if spilled from the river, its ink: the tap tap tap of a nightstick, worming as if sexually from its wielder’s disintegrate shadow, a pain palmmuffled, fistfaced. A helmet invasion, segmentally regiment with how many limbs. Everyone turns, then turns yet again. Unrunged, standing expectant in silence. And then, suddenly — of all things a gazelle, if you can believe it, leaps up from an open sewer, clears the canopy of Tree and of houses, maps a vast arch over the Square, naturally calm, like it’s risen to bow, appearing even, couldn’t be, to nap in leap amid the weather and with groups’ umbrellas lowered not as trees bent from the ascent but as flags hung low in a respect that’s spontaneous and yet, also brave — the gazelle’s own arc the umbrella of sky, a rainbow the covenant of colors that mark us as different, and yet all of a shade…not to worry your belief, though, it’s animatronic, in truth that’s its name, on a timer, and Misses Sanderson stares beatifically, points, forefingered heaven — with the scurrying rivered away, forgotten even in spirit, banished, consecrated to thatwasthen, thisisnow…everyone gasps, it’s amazing. What’re we looking at, Mister Sanderson demands still concerned, confused with the turnings around and the oohlings, the ahs, who, he asks, where, I don’t see anything, will someone please tell me, is it over yet, what? He stares openfacedly, a square unto himself in his jaw, in chin’s jutted flat bone, at the sun at its nooning; loudspeakers swell along with the rising, having faded out the Square sounds, the Market Sounds, the prepared Livestock Reel, fading in now a fresh snatch of music, a fan’s fared anew, just the perfect accompaniment this period score: basses surge celli, harps strung tautly with rays of the sun above gliss up and down these winds of every hue and hewing direction — light to the east, dark to the rest, in a flutter…a swirling crescendo to crash, at tessitural height, steepleward pitched, resounding within the upsidedown bell of the Square, stonebottomed the catacombed Church (Mister Sanderson’s missing everything, he’s scared without the Adamic sense of a neck whether to raise it, to let his apple drop for the slitting — he falls to allfours, reversionary, as if he’s being bombed back into an animal, strafed into the bestial again he begins sniffing at the lampposts, commences with a great licking at the territorial plinths). Having reached its apex, the higher meridian, the gazelle then descends, with smoothly greased grace, to land on the opposite side of the Square, to disappear into another sewer open, then shut. At its disappearance, the Clock handed into the face of the Town Hall sounds another hour, clocks another life, strikes twelve times over twelve tones, and how everyone just applauds like their lives might depend on it.

The Church, too. Ringing.

Isn’t that delightful, Misses Jones asks everyone…nu, wasn’t it, she demands, just incredible, hymn — and as if in thanks for such a display she goes searching her pockets the nine of them for a spare coin to toss to the busker, a streetmusician still playing amid the echo of the bells, those onehanded, clapped clocks, these flutes and splits of champagne and Sekt, bubbly bottles, magnums, jeroboams, rehoboams, and methusalehs even rimmed with wet fingers, ringing a dry and fruity accompaniment to the tutti orchestra just tuningdown, too, that and his sister’s sweet, ethereal mezzo; in hat and sunglasses, she’s most definitely blind, though whether her handicap’s a condition preexisting or yet another directive from Management’s for the moment unclear, and who would presume to insult. As she gives, so does Mister Jones, and the others, they just have to keep up: hoping perhaps not as much to express their gratitude by charity as to obtain for themselves a pardon, at least the assurance of any afterlife preferable to light touring in hell. In this, discretion’s of the utmost importance: the Sandersons lower their eyes, pretend to search around in their purses and pockets before doing as the others do, as the Joneses have done, which is to remove scraps of clothing, strands of their hair, their shoes even, then the ropes of their belts, the only donations left them. Underground, an employee rewinds the Square Sounds, sets it for repeat, a circumambient loop cycled down from the pitch of the dogs…the orchestra dimming din to moos, even oinks, oathed obtestations, the blessings and curslings of commerce returned: May you grow brains! Market’s moody mistrust (mark madness, ruble rage, the zealotry of złoty, the grunting of groschen), as Mister Sanderson approaches the musician’s singing sister, slowly, he’s muttering his appreciation to himself as much as to her — thinking, perhaps she’s deaf, too, thinking aloud, just listen to her do that dies iræ and illa — he holds out his hand and with it holds hers, presses a rag of lining, from a pocket of his pants, into her palm hot with lint, then nods over his shoulder to his wife who she’s nodding to him; the musician’s sister drops their tips, buttons, snaps, zippers, and hems, into one of three pockets of her vest, each one set aside, earmarked, as it’s said: one for her, one for her brother, her lover or maybe he’s both, and of course one for Management, always.

Atop the viewing platform of the spirant spire of the easternmost and yet also northernmost, as it’s alternately compassed it’s breathed, magnetically imposing tower of the clockfaced, clockhandtall Town Hall, Mister & Misses Sanderson the two of them, Misses especially, in excellent physical shape, more than able to manage the centuries of steps spiraling their way to the culminant top…a dizzy cornute, a shofar’s staired chute — they stand gazingout through the telescopes mounted: they veer far to the mountains first, focus, the hills, stomachlike imperfections, these pregnant, tumorous, cystlike, or otherwise cancerously raised from the pale of the land skinned around, and then further, focusing, squinting…behold, a stretch of spines, prickles and thorns, ensnared, ensnaring, as far as east and as north, their sprawl left whitened out of the maps once provided, the map they’d purchased at the aeroport back in Topeka, which they’d been required to purchase, a provisionary splurge — a whiteness, which seems, initially, only a haziness of the eye…this glaze, glaucomally dim, the gradual graying of day, the freezing dusk of an incoming headache — I think I have to lie down…a patchwork of briar and bramble, hooks and snares and of starthorns. Here are the quarters of Polandland they haven’t the time, nor the permission, the permission that is time, to visit: the Lumber Yard (everything here’s labeled, and large, signs in every language to satisfy even the most impotently compelled of the curious), in which the wood’s apparently, according to their Guide later asked, dried for clarinetreeds, for the planks that husk the hulls of boats; then the Gut Mill, in which strings for violins are made, alongside the workshop for knots in the suiciderope…the Ink Distillery, the Nib Works — and then further…if glassneared: out warring the mittelground gone already lost, overlooked — this to which they’ve been made the mere witness of two whose testimonies would stand if only together, as observers only if twinned and with the testified third taking the trinity starred, with them left alone in a garden in which to observe only the sin of each other, it’s said: a son possessed by a wife who’s a ghost, a holying spirit, a soul incarnating a faithful entwined…it’s all coming together, a convergence of sorts, dazedly stooped atop the Town Hall to squint themselves stupid against the gaze of the darkening wind — the cloud pouches, the black rim of their squint: a horizon that’s a hill, with a swarm of night presently tumbling over its height…young kinder with their camp counselors, too, matching in their white & bluecollared shirts, screaming and shouting and having what’s been called, oy, the time of their lives: they’re streaming down the slope latterly cleared of alders and catkiny birch for their gallows, to fall down to the rocks and stones of the valley below and its shadow, the sun’s risible grave — even their orphaned kinder have been ingathered, too, each to their own special programs, their own particular schedule, sensitive to their limitations, whose not, forsaking history for the unique requirement of the young, those at heart. This hill, lastlit, and membraneous as if the rising of the moon — if sectioned conically, maybe, if we’re to be obliged by these workers espied, just off to the forests (in a veer of their scope, working their ways around the shroud of the sky — though with no further focus on what this all means), carting with them their twohandled, manyteethed saws as if the trussed remains of wolf trophy, its flesh for the sacrifice, then the feminine meat of the pelt with which to hide nakedness from the lusts of those whom that flesh would sustain, and their gods…there to clear land for whatever facility’s next, wherever’s next stop to last — if sectioned conically, we’re saying, this hill whether concavely or convex, into a crosssection, a slice taken out, only a sliver, a glassy rind or a peel: that portion removed would be a lens, and so perhaps could shed a ray of light, could straighten and narrow the light now dying, upon the tumult planned just beyond.

Grown below, a ritual clamor: the thrones are being reseated, the bear and the lion are chewing the scenery; between fanging at each other, that is, and keeping from themselves and their schlock postcard prey a hovering, twoheaded eagle: whose claws clutch two gold constellations, that of the hammer, and the brilliantly sharp, horizoning sickle. A scythe, harvesting souls: a reaped vista vast with its armies just massing, partiuniformed, ununiformed, tatterdemalion nighthooded and grim, scarred with elaborate insignia of their own private winter’s invention, already exhausted in their hearts and minds just by the effort it took, it takes, to get lined, accounted for, at the ready. Misses Sanderson swerves from them — better to ignore until even ignorance’s no longer an option: in favor of collecting, if only for the grandmothered attic of her mind, a host of rare, deepbeaked, earthturning birds, carrier butterflies their wings mounted a span across rivers and streams to facilitate pillaring, their bridging cocoon…her scoping the metallic, mechanized work of what she’ll think of as oddlegged, scurrying spiders, her delicate, birdboned face with its fluttery eyes fortified into the spin of their webs, the last caught light of their barbs. How she nods to her husband: a herd of ragged kine, see, Samuel, how they’re grazing on wire, upon heaps of moldering scrap. Lately, she’ll take any wonder as sign, anything fantastic as expected, deserved — Samuel, just look: the making real revelation of another living thing, however mythical, however purposemade, wrought if only for the spectacle of their paying indulgence — a miracle, she says, this place has it all, thought of everything: a ram ensnared in a thicket, look, and missing its horns; sheep sheared naked, then garbed in the skin of the Unicorn, see; locusts, my God they’re locusts, Samuel…storks on parade; geese born of barnacles, grown from a remained grove of trees, hemiformed, varibirthed, the progeny of Ziz or from zat; deer sniffling the moist streaks of snails; gelatinous worms splitting earth; ostricheggs boiling on the back of the salamander, slithered from flame; an ass without rider talking its own tour to itself, if only to remember its remarkable name — ask Miriam, she’s reminding, if she doesn’t know no one does…sly like a fox, it’s swinging a rooster dead overhead the swine of the Romans, suckling süss its perfidious Sus; a calf brightly gilded, tethered to the goat of Azazel — how she wishes she had that fieldguide to flip through, but she’d left it back at the hotel, the only thing in their safe — secured with only the thinnest of threads, reddening then whitening then reddened again, its needle lost to a camel’s pass, the hump of the hillocked horizon: it’s incredible, Sam, just amazing, a caravan of mountains, a procession of clouds — all how they’re leading themselves, led by nothing, toward the sheer edge of the land, a divestment, this divergence, clearing out before their contracts expire, their fortyday, fortynight creation to fall, yet again, from this world, everflattening…further even to where it’s just a blip of the eye, at the tear of a lid, it’s the Behemoth, fashioned from Golemic clay, searching the earth it’s of for the love of its impossible mate: Titus’ gnat perched as a sentry atop winged and wingishly bearded Nebuchadnezzar, powerfully lionlegged, pitifully lion-tailed, heading out toward the oceans, the ocean…to where the Leviathan lies, swallowing forever the whale of Jonah, which itself is forever swallowing the Foundation Stone, the nesting place of the raven, with the dove hovering its reassuring attendance above, flown from its blackened arked cave strewn for the sleeping with eggshells and ashes, where sitting now until perpetually swallowed is only the wisp of an Adam — yet another Guide, the most senior, the first: sitting as straight as a knife for a finger he splits the tongues of the snakes that wriggle up from his throat, wiggle out his mouth then onto his lap, slicing off their arms and their legs, then offering their loss to the beaks of that white raven and that black dove above, to fly their slithers off to any ultimate shore, to poison the final void there to sin…

Again they present themselves at the Cemetery, a full five minutes before the hour appointed: a clock cheeked big and bloated, its hands expanded, as if the two hands together they’re a belt with not enough teeth, stretching as far as it can go, about to snap off the scale into…they’re full to groaning of traditional delicacies, the very best of the regional kitchen, their fingers and lips wet and salted, their kinder messily smacking a snack, licking two scoops each for dessert — might we recommend the Creamatorium, MAP 3D? Can I borrow your book? Can I hide with my guide? A young mensch squats in front of the gate presently open, shuckling lowlife and sucking away, at a cigarette he’s rolled like his mother flakes pastry, like his favorite barmaid flicks her tongue at his…slowly coming apart.

We’re closed today, he says, keeping his eyes from the smoke — closed, the appropriate state of the eyes for memory’s opening.

Smoke required, too, and so, the puffed tone.

No, it’s not, says Kaye, then nods at the woman who’d supported him earlier, who over the course, third, of their meal has become his fiancée. Maybe they’d let them marry at the church in the square.

Who to ask?

We’re undergoing repairs, the mensch says, reconstruction, please consider a donation, you know the spiel, I’m on break.

No, says Kaye, I don’t. What gives? He turns to the Group, it’s his Group he’s thinking of it as, he lets himself think, if only for a moment, a shut of the eyes this meditative minormorphosis, a protomorphosis, perhaps, come unto the minatorily mundane, whichever’s opposed and so comfortable, known: his Group that’s beginning to lose interest in the Cemetery, though, any at all, really, beginning actually to lose interest in even being a Group, would just as well give up on it, individually, call it a day, without loyalty, go back to the hotel, take a hot shower and — suddenly, the mensch springs from his squat, steals Kaye’s hat from his head (a new, spooning bowler he’d upgraded to upon arrival: a pity, its brim had been bending just perfectly, upturned and immaculately round as if a haloing smile), then steals through the gate, leaving it open and then into the Cemetery itself, disappears behind bars, imprisoned by trees. Nothing obstructing their entry, Kaye walks in heavy, freezing shoes two, three steps to the gate but as he reaches for its handle to open it wider to allow his fiancée to pass through gently first, a gale swings it away from him, fled: rudely shut, rustily latched, locked in an untoward kissing of metal; and so he tries for it again, tries at it, the hefty knocker founded obscene as a fist, the handle yet again an extended palm cast in iron but empty, still nothing, then remembers, the first mensch’s key, in that memory withdrawing a hand to knead the full, lumpy hurt of his stomach as if to heal a bloating of boils, their expression, a carbuncle’s emote, an indignity lanced, brought to a head from which he’s soon weeping; that, and he’s developing a troubling rash. He falls on the gate with forearms, elbows, shoulders, the edges, the sharps, but no one answers, none opens, then presses the full but also emaciated, increasingly fevered, almost tubercular weight of his body against it, catarrhconsumptive and bleeding its time what a waste of good scrofula, such a squander of nodes…it won’t budge, and so he turns to be comforted by his fiancée, Faye her name is, stepping into a mudpuddle that wasn’t there before, he hadn’t noticed: it’d probably been secreted from below, piped up from an underground tank designed especially for this muddying purpose — it creates business for the hotel shoeshines, keeps the rag industry going through a tough patch, scuffed, supports Polandland’s polish; and then there’s his hat to worry about, food poisoning, indigestion, or an allergy, maybe. All at once the skies open, nature ungated, the Group huddles together under the gate’s overhang…as a girl with hot rubor eyes and dark hair that’s inseparable from her dark, deepnecked dress makes her way past them, topped with — it seems like, Kaye’s hat. He twitches ticks to the front of the shiver, yells out to her in a voice of hoarse ice, the expected: that’s my hat, you’ve got my hat blah, but in response she just stops, turns to face him, shakes her head sultry, even more hair tumbles loose to the sky the hat flies to, coldly brimmed by the wind, swooned up through the air. Then she reaches among the pockets of that dress, which is slinky, formfitted by gusts, and empties herself, untucking: coins and bills omnidemoninant, (telephone numbers of and mail from the) presidents of shipping concerns and inspectorate bureaucrats, produces from her bosom a key on a chain inscribed with the legend: Room 50, hands it to Kaye with a whorish leer that makes Faye jealous enough to slap the wet from his face.

And surely — the key opens the gate.

Nu, fill in your own personal details, your own private designs — these coincidences have been keeping culture going for ages…it’s a paradox, all of it, it’s easy to think, in that it’s a parable, too, and as such, parabolic: always returning to whence it arose; a parable in that while it might make sense within its own system, which is closed, it won’t be applied outwardly, however you try, nothing corresponds…though how can anything be both paradoxical and, also, something else, in possession of any other quality, hymn, not so simple’s the thought: if it’s paradoxical, it’s only that, and nothing else, only a paradox, and then not even that, too. Kaye knows only this — he wants in. But there’s always a tug, isn’t there, the chain and its decapitated ball with a face, without eyes, without mouth…Faye his fiancée seething but dumpish, petulant, pouting, with the rest of them almost wholly disinterested now, though anyway becoming herded behind him — and so, to narrate themselves on. Kaye steps toward the gate, halfway through it, making it to the middle of the arch, between its archings, just as a mass of people stream out, umbrellasfirst, an even earlier Group or groups nearly impaling then trampling this Group, his, trying to make their way past in orderly file, trying to make their ways through, to insinuate themselves if only halfheartedly — but the other Group’s too strong, too willful, and anyway wanting out of the weather and home, their hotels, the ferrules of their umbrellas too sharp, too accurate, and black with hate, they beat them back, gouge eyes and navel, prick and slash. Finally, the old mensch with the one leg that this time around it’s the other he’s missing, him with the moles and nose and bifid beard, and a crutch stripped from birch, shuts the gate behind the Group just departed, wipes his eyes with the back of his hand, points at Kaye, grins angrily.

You’re late, he says along with the bells of the Church, ringing out in echo Kaye loses count how many tenored times; the mensch winds from them, their toll toll toll, his pocketwatch, chained inconspicuously what with the heady medal and the beard obscuring, setting himself five minutes early just to be sure.

We were here, Kaye yells, nodding fiercely to his fiancée and faithful others, jealous friends, hers, for support.

And then the mensch shakes his watch to his ear, you were early then, he says, whatever makes you feel better.

Kaye throws up his hands, and his fiancée with that earlier episode obviously forgiven places a palm on the back of his neck, which is soaked: he grabs the bars with his fingertips, claws…they’ve been caged in the open, are starving and thirsty again, and afraid, it’s contagious, this fear, this conspiranoia, made animal amid the human surrounding — Kaye shakes the bars and growls like the beast he’s become, aguish, abject, like the creature they’ve made him to be. A mutant, a changeling, a cockroach if insects have hats, if even they might deserve, might merit the commandment of cover. Here’s yours back, the mensch says removing his own, the highpeaked, mothworn relic of a war too anciently besides the point (the thrust finger, whose) to matter which cause he bled for, survived; he throws it up and over the gate. Management Assumes No Responsibility For The Safety Of Personal Effects — Anything Found Will Be Held Until Your Death, After Which It Becomes The Property Of Polandland.

That’s not mine, Kaye whispers as the hat lands on his head.

Thief! the mensch yells, accusing; he leaps in the air, upon finding ground his crutch snaps in two, into two little limbs, and he steadies himself, leans, waves the amputee splinters at Kaye, wildly, clattering them on the bars, between them.

Two Security scamper over, pat Kaye down with lingering hands.

Your papers, they ask, your passport and visa, your name, date of birth, which would you prefer: cash or credit?

This is preposterous. I have nothing of the sort. You know my identification’s been confiscated.

Is this yours? one Security asks, this the short fat mensch; the other’s as tall as his partner’s wide, thin as he’s short: always, they were hired that way from birth, have been bred for this gig — without culture, tradition’s convention, how would these two ever get work, stay together? He waves around the Room 50 key he’s found in Kaye’s pocket, turned the outsized iron key the onelegged mensch had used to unlock his teeth. How’d he exchange it so well, with such sleight, Kaye thinks: no doubt about it, these are professionals.

A woman handed it to me, a woman who had my hat.

You expect us to believe a woman stole your hat? says the tallskinny, taking the mensch’s from Kaye’s head and snooping his nose around the thin lining.

Not this hat — this one isn’t mine!

And so you’re also a liar! the onelegged mensch says, he’s leaning between the bars and panting, heaving his lungs out; he broke my crutch, too…shortfat takes hold of Kaye with one hand, liberally pinches his fiancée, unprotesting, with the other, as tallskinny goes to telephone, maybe, and never returns; shortfat relents, it’s getting dark and there’s Curfew to think of, last rounds coming on, rubs his hands for warmth, grows tetchy about the eyes and mouth then nervously asks the old mensch — who’s turned out in his second statement to the officer to be only the cemetery’s (and at that, third asst.) caretaker — for the time…are you sure that’s exact?

Quite.

And so shortfat dismisses the caretaker, nods to Kaye his release, walks up the street leaving him alone, without fiancée or Group — one gone back to plead his case to the head concierge (The Swiss is his title), who she’s been told has vast intercessionary connections, unspecified privileges, abusable power; the others gone showered, then mealed again to their sleeps, forgetting about everyone not dreaming their dream — as Kaye, enraged, freecaged, tries once last to bend the bars of the gate, smacks them with his head, flails in an exhaustion of even frustration.

You’d better be getting back to your hotel, shortfat yells over his shoulder, it’s Curfew.

Soon enough. Whenever we want.

We wouldn’t want you getting into any trouble you can’t afford.

By now, it’s dark, and the Cemetery would be closed: he’ll have to try again tomorrow; that is, if Faye’s up to it, if he is, not too sick from a night out in the snow; if she’d still love him, if he’d love her still, if they’d let him live just one more moon into morning.

A trashcan upended to its rumbustious side tumbles past him a laugh down the street — rolled in snow, rolling, still burning cold: crumpled corrugated with letters that’ve been sent by and to these tourists, his tourists, these postcards not censored, only forbidden, unsent, consigned to, cosigned by, a sinister flame. Dear Father dead father, and yet, never Sincerely. A dissevered chimney bellowing ash, the ciphers of sentiment’s cinefaction: Kaye follows the smoke, as he slips down the street, and every other step he takes he’s making moves for his hat, though he knows it’s not there.

It seems to be the season of disappointment, now, doesn’t it?

And so, in the spirit, here’s another interpretation: it’s that the Cemetery, this cemetery, was open all the while. It has been open, and is open still, six days a week dawn to dusk, major holidays excepted — though if it shuts its gates a moment too early upon Friday afternoons, which is the eve of our Sabbath, who can blame them, who would — and that anyone who ever wanted to might’ve walked in, and wandered around, without hindrance or hurt, beheld the Grave, had their audience, spent however satisfactory hours in contemplation, in suitable prayer, appeal, thanks or no thanks, a murmuring of hope, the laying of a florid rock, mulling over own mortalities, your blessing, your call. Without denial, without interruption. But it’s that these visitors, these maudlin tourists, wouldn’t have wanted that, wouldn’t have had it that way; it’s a situation existing only in their disappointment, what a waste: as it was, as it is, as it could’ve been, as it still can be — they’d file in, to pay not admission but homage, respect (entrance is free, as it is to every cemetery, the way it should be: after all, the people interred, the permanent visitors, the visitors permanentmaking, they’ve already paid for the privilege of any future visitation, dearly, in death then in the fees for death’s upkeep); the Gate’s open, any gate’s open; generous hours are prominently posted, again: excluding holidays secular, and religious, and Shabbos; the elderly groundskeeper or caretaker, call him what you will and he’ll smile, he’s always smiling, he welcomes the visitors, happy to have them, he’s lonely, he pities; the Grave’s kept in flowers, it’s kept full of them season depending — they’re sprouting from the very earth that’s the grave of all graves.

As for the mensch so sought after, this Cemetery’s most visited burial, this famous writer of stories and novels unfinished by night as by day an ironic functionary, a bureaucrat’s sarcastic conscience, this lowly insurance assessor (and they need insurance now like a hole in the head, Kaye’s thinking for whose peace of mind) — he lies alongside his father in a dark, leafy plot; given the relationship, their grave’s incredibly undisturbed, at peace is the feeling. He lies with his mother, also, they both do, under a stone that, however, is not the original. Regrettably. Wasteful. Ultimately, for its own good. No, all the originals are for the museums now, organizations only recently not for profiting, lately chartered, commissioned, just securing the necessary paperwork and approvals, stamps, clearances, and blessings to move in, to refurbish, spiff and shine. Now, about their own rejections, their touristy trials by delay, their processes interminably scheduled — petition after petition, only frustration to follow appeals to any Authority designated supreme — here’s the truth: they secretly wanted to be turned away, they not so secretly want it; we welcome that species of horror: after all, it’s all part of the experience, isn’t it, figured, refigured, packagedin. Terrible, that in the end it’s mere — entertainment. Anyone who has achieved purpose has failed it. Anyone who gains entry has lost life. But neither are such wretched exempt: if they prevail, even they must be humbled; we, too, must cover our heads — with something, with anything…with even the sky, or with the earth shoveled above us, a stone.

In the Church

All the sites taken care of, the musts, the have tos and don’t misses, checked off the To Do, blackened from red as if blood in the night lacking air, canceled from memory in anticipation of the final cancellation (no refunds will be offered, don’t even think it to ask), annulled in the face of the allannulling, the hind allannulled — they’re indulged, as if thanked, given the grace of a single allowance, their last. They’re shepherded perfunctorily, if with a slight disappoint with regard to the derision expected by most, to the Square, and into its Church: before any sacrifice, these lambs need time to mature, need to fatten their lean time, need to be fleshed out in full so that we know what exactly we’ve slaughtered — they’re lain down in a valley of glass, watched over by windows eve’s eyed…a marble pasture of Church. Though others hold it’s a Cathedral. Godfearing forget it, faith me no faith — it’s naming that’ll always be the duty most sacred: to church or not to church, that’s not the question — it’s naming, it’s number, its Record. And so the answer’s that no one knows from Cathedrals anymore, and that this building, whatever it is, whichever it was, whether the footstool of the bishop or the throne of the homeless, might be anything at all in its next incarnation: an orphanage, a hospital, warehouse, granary, stables; or else, it might be left empty, to be remade if into inutility, purposelessness, without worth; it might even be destroyed, like the rest, like its worshippers here, rubbled to the rabble of the Square, never to be remade, never to be rebuilt, resurrected in memory only through the sky that, over the centuries, in the course of the worship’s erection, has held its spiring shadow, now faded in the ambition of form; the heavens would waste away into a nothingness, a void, found in the volute shape of the grandeur that once shaded the further light of the furthest sun from the earth and its barren cold dark. Though if a grandeur, then a grandeur unfinished, always imperfect, imperfecting, anonymously flawed in its failure to effect, to aid, in yet another opportunity forsaken by God to rejoin us in our own supplication. And so as not to embarrass them in this moment of need, let’s say it’s whatever they want it to be — a church, a cathedral, Saint Someone’s, Saint Other’s, Saint Anyone They So Desire’s…if only they pray hard enough for it; only the best for the conduct of their martyrdom, their decisive confession, what else to expect from such accommodating hosts? No need to thank us, just die. To fist a hole in the ice of the font, knuckleshards from the lip of the piscina, a flotsam of blood, stoupy skinchips, bergs of bone. With quick nervous fingers they flick themselves pure with the lick of filthy water restive under the freeze. Maybe it’s holy, blessed — by their pain, by their (even the Virgin groans) tears. To kneel at the threshold, then rise, they make their way toward the altar.

Here, this place of worship of nondenomination…enough to know that it’s theirs, not much longer — arching Magnificat, delicate yet hulking, an elemental transcendence of elements, less rock and stone than an architecture of them that is in its totality history itself, an earthrecord, time bound within a complex of complicated masonry, ascetic iron, vitirform trills, rills of gold. Here, they’re here to pray, to flagellate themselves with tongues, to mortify — to pray though for what they’re not sure exactly, besides the condition of prayer itself, innerness, attentive mindquiet: for salvation, maybe, for an afterlife, perhaps, let me go without pain — to consecrate themselves worthy of such terminal martyrdom, it’s important before anything else to make a firm ground of faith, to more deeply found their belief. Please, let us go, let me loose and I promise to do whatever I’m asked, even hope…O if only You would send us an angel, an aeroplane and fast, parachute me a new pair of shoes. Redeem me first, then we’ll talk about trust. Blame, later bargain. All fall to their knees, the Sandersons prayer to prayer. From its console in back, the great organ shakes, throaty pipes, its diapasons woken to rattle, giving a gag; divisions shatter like the stains of the glass, admitting pure light. To pray for their own souls, no — to prey on the souls of family immemorial, sacrosanct and died long ago, whose scavenged holiness might merit for their inheritors, they wish, the most meager of Miserere, all they Psalm to ask. To be delivered into the very hands of the stigmatic, openpalmed, dirtynailed…clasped seeking prayer, clasped seeking the blessing of prayer — for the miraculous resurrective unto the sacristy’s hide, Amen, hold me near. Mold weeps from the altar, flows from the skinflint folds of the wormworn antependium, the glaciate rot of settings high and without jewel atop the jut of the retable, the reredos, oozing wet down the apse westward toward the opposite apsis, down the nave, also, toward the stumps of the transept, its cruciform arms uncrowned, without hands, fingerless…sheathed in thorns iceformed, iciclebarbs, clots of cold veining the floor, which is marble. A dust stirs, as they kneel to rise only to kneel again, then rise again, and then again kneel. Hassockfooted sons of a Father with the head of a Son, they swallow their paternosters in a teemed teething of lips: less to invoke the divine, His mercy, not one authority holds, than to ensure the remembrance of history, the good faith of record — if such ideas as History and Record could ever exist in a future to which we, too, would impossibly survive.

Pray, Miriam’s offering encouragement, pray your hearts out, if hearts you have; this is your last opportunity, be…how do you say it? be grateful, that’s it, for your lives, for its plenty, what was. Thank us; thank your God for us.

Again, she reminds — don’t forget to enjoy yourselves. I’ll be back to collect you all in an hour.

Above them, the bells: their waves ripple out a sea in the air — an ineluctable mass of soundweather, the sonant oceanic, a diluvian rumbling flume: it reverberates a rusty air, stifled dully by that other wet coming in through the belfry, the eaves. They’re too many tolls…they can’t all be counted, how much time: their ringing descending deep from the hollows to patronize the leaden vaulting below; they’re heard resounding as if brass beaten to lime, encrusted in cirri, balmcaked in salt; theirs less a bright clanging clank in the belfry than the clattering shatter of frozen fire; less the brilliant lick of an icebound bell than the cloudcast sounding of an anchor struck wreck: the walled claps of the bells’ wake swelling a sensed force into a felt power…reaching upward in prayer, our worshippers making as if to clasp them beaten as hearts to their breasts, are then knocked down into a thronging Mass, humbled, made modest at the knee — the hindmost hinge in the door of their bow, the gate of their prayer: to enter the sound that is the church, the sonic itself that is the cathedral with them rendered unto air, the substance of only an echo; to exit, they have merely to remain ringing until they’re no longer — to shut their mouths, stand alone. Fade. They’re pewed, rowed, fallen down to one knee, bent to grovel at the hovel made of another’s bow — the father one ahead, the stranger one over, the same. Then, they’re righted again, now again, up and down they creak, they crack, as if their bones are deadened wood, suffused with an ache, dull as deepgrained, the knotted throb of limbs, sapped alive if cold with thin blood. A few older members of the Group, many of them more stubborn than believing, more habitual in this than ever swayed by a faith, they get up after an initial kneel, sweep their slacks and skirts of dirt and must, remove themselves from pews’ hassocks to the seats rowed along the walls in cornered chapels, to sit a while and think less of God than of the art hung around them. To look and whisper, to point and listen and touch and — to tour. Then, as if not feeling quite confirmed in their covenant, whatever that would be, they all, eventually and without exception, fall down again, prostrate: to make meek, an attempt at the inevitable abject, their souls weak, but pathetically true; humility as an order of wretched sublimity — the immodest shame of those who would seek eternity not in heaven (which for us is merely the forgetting of earth, a mundane, temporal forgetfulness), but rather in the lives of tomorrow, the future; their names to be writ into prayers to be invoked by generations, of and for generations, to come, seeking favor far in excess of anyone’s merit, even that of the very son of God, whose image — which merely usurps the miracle of his existence, they should be told — is splayed up on high, nailed to a cross just beyond the further altar. Up and down they kneel and they narrow, they straighten, they genuflect, bow down and up — as if this Group’s nothing but a congregation of marionettes (which are a local kraft-product, and after antique home furnishings Polandland’s most notable export), wunderpuppets strung down on spidery strands from the vertex of the highest spires, tugged to the innermost peaks of the vaulting and from there set down slack on their wood, the flaking flesh, now made to rise up again, then down upon their knees again and again, writhing along with the snakelike wriggling that holds them: slitherine dust, illuminated through the roseate windows, mullionmartyred, the iron hairs of the sun, them being made to cross themselves madly and, inevitably, silly…tangling, becoming knotted with the crux of that sacrifice maddeningly ancient, laughable as so long ago and yet still worshipped, held in immemorial awe. Spectacles, testicles, it went, wallet & watch, and with time almost up: all those millennia later and still they libel us with blood, long deserving, earning, their present fate — the conscience of such curse…to cathect every Christ’s the idea, the sacred heart of the Mater, dolorosa, virginal in punishment, mangered new to a retribution as exacting as this: they pray to her, too; her son, they’ll begin to ignore: if any would survive, they’d survive without him, soon to regard God’s putative heir with less love than pity, the submission of only a pitiful shrug — now that they’d know what he went through, now that they’d know what even he didn’t survive.

Dogma, it’s worthless, gone to the dogs to bury bonedeep…and the lion shall lie down with the lamb, sure, right, whatever you say. They’re thinking, what makes a ghost holy, what’s so holy about any old spirit, and what makes being holy that much better than being alive — a catechismic calamity, lost. They weep a last Lacrimosa; their teary mass rips a voice through the Mass. Have mercy on us, Kyrie, whether we be flawed or perfected as one. To sing through a single mouth, sunmutual, sunswallowing — silent. Lord in Heaven, we’re homesick…there’s a moon through the window, it’s time to go home. Miriam, her umbrella ever aloft (clutching in her other hand a weave of basket, her own late brunch), wades through their tears down through the nave, through the reeds of their rush, their quick murmur to finish, to sum — then herds them, in a docile flock, as compliant as corpses already, back down the nave again and out the doors of the Church, parting, their weeping streaming out in advance of them, though, as if to announce their end to the coldbrazen air: their flow to freeze, then, into a slip of steps; they slide down them, this stair shed of flume, how they fall — into the gaping, screwtoothed mouths of waiting trucks, gasping exhaust, to be hauled out to the sorrowed stations, and there…trucks dumping their burden to the insatiable bellies of idling, smokefoaled trains: their tracks as long as the rail of the day and as torturous, thrashing, wild — chartered by dusk, they’re to be hauled through the night, for tomorrow’s yawn, the dawn of their death…

Thank You For Visiting

Our Tour’s over, finished, sof, thank you kindly, we all really enjoyed our time together, the little we had to spend, here on earth, in the world; maybe we’ll do this again, get together one of these days, a reunion, to reminisce, remember already, it won’t be soon enough: my heaven or yours, name the cloud, we’ll be there…

For now, though, it’s time to settle up, and to fortify, too, one’s position, armed with nothing amid the turrets of a castle of cloud — time to validate a status on the books: to grave an encampment deep within the lines of the ledger, wisping smoke to burn at the bind. Affiliation’s moved in, demanding its dues, and the Solutioneers, professionals that they are, expect prompt payment. Their remit, pounds of flesh impounded. Less a revival of an olden play, less to rule a ruleless game, more to revivify for the sake of spiel, they extract their knives from a cast of smoking, boiling vats, sharps culled from dripping wicks — to cut deep at the primordial rib, then turning to flick at the quick of wrist, exacting their dribbling tribute: incising a gash of mouth at the gut, excising the imprisoned flesh, the imprisoning flesh; a ribcage: a cage of ribs, caging the ribs. Once gutted from mass to individual, with appetites, wants and needs, with indulgences, with schedules and itineraries of their own, they’re regrouped, again coagulated, permitted to circulate as currency of newer veins: assembled in nerves, bundled in sinews, heartmusclebound, freed from the tight pack of trains, regurgitated from the boxcar tract, the intestinal track, then rearranged in limb. Allowed just a moment of air, an eye’s breath of outer light, they’re then reassigned to inner dim, a roiling gurgle, to these bowels of barrack, these quarters halflived. Drained of starve. Shivering, bluelipped, blacklipped, without lips or voice. Made fit to slip into bodied bunks, between meager slabs of spine, columns brained, rows shorn of ornamenting thought…they’re numbered as if all are mere vertebræ in a mythically infinite serpent, stingily coiled yet envenomed with combustible poison: it sheds its skin as it slithers its multitude, forever stretching out to the outermost end of its endless span, to make its greatgorged swallow — the enormous prey, itself, fixed to the tooth of its fang. Helixworming. Petrieyed. Lensed in reversible time…

Understand, what we’re confronting here is a reversal, Peripeteia: call it the evil of banality, the protocol by which we enkitsch the lives of the no longer living, rendering the rendered unto Caesars unceasing, offering their memory up to the dicts of any armchair dictator, to the pronouncements of any weekend historian, decrees from the sofa, the judgments of the further den. Here’s what we’ve only now understood. You’re either historically alive, or you’re historically dead. There’s no argument there. And that the purpose of life is only to revolt against dying, and that we do this, all of us do, through our rallies and speeches, some delivered to millions, others kept locked in our heads, marches and parades through what was Berlin or our bedrooms, through wars both global and intimate, fought forever and on infinite fronts. Please, it’s all about relations (discourse with an image, intercourse with the imaged and yadda), all a matter of access, of narrative angle, story arc. Institutional support. A career track. O the tenure of breath. Pay attention. Important. How we live amidst the publicity of privation. Witness the unique willingness of our people to package the product of experience both collective and individual, only to market it — that experience of living through history, that experience of being forced to live against history (as simulacra not impelled by duress but by choice, it’s been said, not compelled by oppression, torture or threat, but amazingly by elective affinity) — it becoming a matter of preference to engage such sensation, to become occupied by such strange infotainment, as virtualized in seemingly every medium to be just enough real that you’ll come out of the commerce alive, and perhaps even willing to be upsold on an ever newer revelation, an even more intimate experience: that of your own life no longer yours, lived only between the deaths of your preference. Identify and die, deny thrice and survive, up to you. Debread the morning. Crumbling noon. Mooncrust saved for soup of nightsky. Birdfingered. Candletoed. They’ve drunk the dogs, they’ve eaten the hooves…sleepless — they’ve forgotten how to dream, in what language. This is what they remember, from what they never knew, from what they never experienced and never will, and we all say — Never Again! Camps are reconstructed. Reopened. This Camp Has Been Reconstructed Thanks To The Generous Support Of The Lauder — Muggston, Corp. Reopened, but less to host the victims than to provide for their subsequent visitors: admission’s always flowing blood and coin when your guests don’t die on you; it’s only once the last body’s burnt that the real money begins coming in — green growing from ash…in the end, it’s better to set up a spectacle, a landmark attraction, and all for the sake of peddling its image to fade, all for the purpose of licensing its horror, of merchandising its terror unto the umpteenth generation, trustfunded, that of the greatest inheritance, than to actually believe in the truth of an unchanging cause, a ceaseless crusade, the given and graven.

Understand, because there will always be change, please, there will always be cease, that’s important, and that the only ones who ever survive then survive their survival are those — schmucks, mamzers, up to no good — who are always, perpetually, reinterpreting themselves, reinventing themselves, remaking themselves along with the antipodal identities (theirs always, too) of victim and victor. Protean. Praying the mutable. If you don’t like my morals I’ll get new ones. If you don’t like those, I’ll just have what you’re having. If you’re not willing to share then I’ll take. Of course, future propositions aside, prophecies, predictions, plans however inspired tabled upon the deeprooted, belled as innumerably rung surfaces of cedartree stumps, postponed to bygones, exiled to the dark of the clock — of course, they’re put to death, here and now, we’ll spare you the details; that’ll all be prorated into the newest Tour leaving shortly: whatever screaming shouting praying promises and negotiations, whatever resistance there was, it’s merely a gesture, a measure of the mercy required; neither party would’ve wanted it any other way; quiet acceptance would’ve satisfied neither, docile fate (even if interpreted as token, as such gestural nonsense) would’ve gratified none. Though most are killed, the vast majority being accorded the privilege of massmurder, are put out of massmisery, many others, we’re sad to report, die just prior to the opportunity for such rarefied martyrdom: dying too early of fear, too soon how they just drop in their socks; though it’s less fear, some think, than it is inchoate anticipation, uncontrollable, they say, undue excitement at the possibility of being so chosen…some soil themselves, others feal, fall into a giggle, hyperventilating on their happiness at this prospect, this privilege, this right — at being condemned to suffer such an eternal condition, what should we call it, maybe by every name we’ve ever been called; a prospect so elementally sad, and a privilege so maddening, a fate so existentially gorgeous, and yet so bewildering, so gorgeously crazymaking, too…O to be ingathered into that most glorious State that is the eternalized promise of suffering, which is bordered by seas of jealousy, its shores zealously guarded by the most vocal, if gentle, of wolves. And yet again, for those still alive: history’s known, always has been, on record, and in every format your nostalgia might fetishize; once again, nothing’s ever denied an initial existence, never is or was, never will be. Surely, it’s terrible — it’s terrifying even to think, to test as Abraham once was tested, and once tested himself, if only metaphorically, or lamely angelically, your darkest convictions, your most vile capacities if ever reborn to an opposite side, remade into an oppressor, reinterpreted as victor, lord of the manner, king of the dunghill if only for now; a horror for one, then a horror for all, a horror once then a horror still and always forever. Never never again. Surely, once it’s known such tragedy can be forever forgotten — unless, that is, any of us might wish to avert its return.

They’d known if from the getgo and keep going, don’t run, that just calls attention — just walk, head down and fast, don’t look back…but the very fact that they’ve stayed on all this time, keepingup their participation through to the end, never once flagging or even thinking of flight — despite all how they’ve kept dumb on the safetyword, I forget, the very fact (less false than fiction, fictive) that they’ve in the end gone and turned in their vouchers, readying themselves for what they knew, what they have to know, was necessary and yet also knowing, they have to know, was never required (surely, probably, maybe — we each make our own Laws, carve into our eyes our own sets of commandments), that means history’s borne into the balance, hunks of dateflesh being judged in the scales of our eyes, yearmeat hung from the hand that tells the weight of our time. Means that this’d been Bereishit from the very beginning, preordained. Understand that lastminute, last moment Affiliation’s always an option — whether if you knew someone, possibly, or had a few friends somewhere or other, that’s the gossip, that such redepemtion’s on offer as unofficially as anything else: a rumor though who knows how wellpublicized. Perhaps such recourse’s kept whispersoft, it’s been suggested, never even mentioned at all, it’s been said, except, that is, in the loudest and most regular of announcements over the Polandland PA: offers to convert, openly voiced, if stridently exhorting, coming at all hours of the night, incentives offered then doubled to trip…join up now the gargle promises and you’ll receive what — your choice of home and a wife.

Still, despite any fanaticism for accuracy, for accountability, no one really knows how many of them opt to enlist; futz, the Record sure schrifts the wit out of me: numbers have been censused, then censured upon the request of the convert, expunged, slated for wipe, at least any documentation still extant’s been made inaccessible to better than us, classified best to forget it, topsecret of the bottomless drawer — offlimits to all even a rough estimate tamed gentle then leashed to an iron disclaimer as to how many of them are taking their keepers, their executioners, their saviors and trainers up on such a scandalous opportunity (with excellent benefits, good dental & health, twoweeks’ paid vacation’s the hope), such a horrendous occasion on which to become one of them, one with them. Most won’t talk about it, won’t darken their mouths. Unknown, then, not only what sum but also what kind — what why they go and shirk from death, to avail themselves of a falsified salvation; unknown who exactly birthwise, bloodwise, Judas themselves to exult in such debasement (yes, many have suggested, perhaps for their most secret souls it’s a matter of the Gnostic: sanctity as merited through sin, that old spiel), then up and leave their lines linedup to execution, two-by-two to gas and fire, there just outside the fray to untie the knot that was their rope, drop their pants, strip the rest, immediately exchange uniforms — new garb pressed and kept at the ready, personalized since before any of them ever were born — to reveal to all the makeshift of a new demeanor, to take on yet another development, on the wing, on the fly: shifts of wind, crossroadchoices, personalitychange. Then, to become as guards to their own, to their kin, colleagues of the armed menschs who now welcome the converted with gun, open arms — to become the executioners of their own families, whom they’d kill to survive, they have to, responsible for the others they’ve had to remove themselves from, to belong, the communities they’ve had to excommunicate from the lonely midst of their congregation of one, if only to become, mutatis mutandis, ultimately worthy of an incontrovertible shame: the humiliation of averting their own martyrdom, and so betraying belief for the infamy of a deeper, holier doubt. Of course, it’s been said, this is probably only a few of them, an embarrassed handful or so — or so we’re assured by a source no one’s entitled to extirpate or name. Most don’t need to be their own Jeremiah or Ezekiel, don’t need to dream the dreams of an Isaiah, or require the interpretations of a Joseph son of Israel to get the idea: how this is once-in-a-life, and yet though it means death, it’s a wonderful one, this martyrdom, and how you just can’t pass that up — how infrequently an opportunity like this would come around, goes the campsite, campfireside argument between husband and wife, how often they’re asking each other, themselves, did an opportunity like this really arise back when we had the numbers, the majoritycount? As for the kinder, they have their own say in the matter, are mandated their own, personalized, final solutions — having been assigned to an attachment of guidance counselors, a phalanx of baccalaureate advisors — irrespective of parental decision. Would all fundamentalists please report to the fundament? Thank you. Agnostics in agon, atheists placing faith in only themselves — putting egg after orphaned egg into one blackened basket, Miriam’s, reedwreathed, to be sent down that river that flows to a land called Posterity, located far in the west. In the end, it’s better to decry everything under the sun as older even than the foreskin of the unbelievable, born just the day before untenable, up all night crying colic without viability, than to harm even one single hair upon the Godhead; to pluck it as bald as the death of a chicken, and then to argue what came first — the Word become flesh, first scaly, then feathered, then molting in names — whether the yolk or the egg.

All who haven’t taken the Law upon themselves — as if a peddler’s burden, his wife’s pregnancy carrying high and to the right, indicative not of sex but of an enemy given quarter — they all die, and the Sandersons, too, who flame like fame in the stove, in the ovens, who pass like gas into air. And so now only the Affiliated are left. Finally, the realization of Rambam’s great prophecy, this the Messianic victory of the bornagain…enddays for those lately born upon the bow of Noah — conversion’s covenant arching above in living color, a rainbow a tainting of blood. All of them, that is, with just a few pitiable exceptions, leftovers, dross, we’ll deal with them shortly, the remnants, they know who they are — if you’ll just be patient, and you can be, I just know you can be, can behave, I know you pretty well by now, and I like you, you’re good people; if I had a sister, just wait and I’ll tell you…it’s over, wake up, our patience exhausted, finally, we’ve waited and wasted enough, it’s finished, over and done with, at last. There’ll be no more destruction that we don’t ourselves bring up, or create, no more Exile either — unless we get tired and decide to exurbiate out to Egypt again, redevelop the Valley of Kings, pave the dunes, stripmall the tombs; I hear the weather’s wonderful this time of year; we’ll raze Sweden, we’ll franchise Kamchatka, forget it, trademark Uganda, Africa, Asia, not a problem, I’ve got a brother on the board, the zoning committee. I ask you, when you own the whole planet, when all of it’s yours, and when there’s pretty much only you left and your family and those like you and likeminded, where the hell, exactly, are you supposed to exile from? where the gehenna are you supposed to exile to?

From the right side of the bed to the left.

Diasporate to the den, will you?

And leave me alone.

Exodus yourself to the corner market, pick me up a carton of milk. Whatever you do, though, keep your distance, stay away…don’t attract attention — but that’s antiquated thinking, because there’s no attention anymore, there’s no away and no distance, how we’re all on our own, that whole adrift in the universe thing, existentiallylike, atomic or I forget nuclear: we’re left at home all alone by the parents, the sitter, their God; we’re remanded to ourselves, with no one left to say No to us, to deny, deny and, thriceover, deny…left to our own most Edenic devices: we don’t need your Yeses no more, we don’t need no permission, to stay up real late, not shower, take in hours of mindless teevee; venturing outside only to loot the fruit from the tree on the lawn of our Garden. A scrutiny tears from laughter, oversight blinks — brothers’ keepers? What’s the schmuck still locked up for? He gets the keys to the castle; I get the keys to the car.

Abel, my brother, over here, come closer, don’t worry, I won’t hurt you no more…listen, I heard this voice just last night when I was out taking a piss on the lawn (I came home drunk again, I know, Kiddushshikkered, hahaha, right, couldn’t make it so I went all over the bush), anyway so listen, Abel, listen to me there’s this voice it slithers up my stream of piss, right up my putz and around my body, my chest and like all the way up to my head where it slips its tongue forked into each ear.

You listening, hymn?

S-strangling.

Cain, it says, lis-s-ten up bud, my name’s-s permiss-ss-ion — and I’m here to tell you a few things-s.

Good & Evil, nu, they’re jus-s-t what you make of them, the only absolutes-s are a whole lot more obvious-s than that.

Nudity’s-s okay, as-s long as-s s-she’s a real s-she (thes-s-e days-s, it’s saying, you never can tell).

Lis-s-ten, the snake hisses in one ear out the other, I heard (from a certain bird I s-shouldn’t name, the other night, I think Eve) that your putz of a father he’s-s throwing you out of the Garden, thinks-s it’s-s high time you two boys-s went out on your own. Here’s-s a tip. Head for America. There you’ll live as-s gaudy and as-s loud as-s you pleas-s-e. Des-s-troy s-stuff. Make mess-ss-es-s. No problem.

Open two shuls-s, never s-step a foot ins-s-ide one of them.

Futz, never find yours-s-elf ins-s-ide either.

Als-s-o, there’s-s no reas-s-on to live on top of one another anymore, you’ve got no excus-s-e.

A word to the wis-s-e? Go ghetto the des-s-ert. There’s-s a whole bunch of S-State outs-s-ide California.

Mos-s-t importantly, keep everything in pers-s-pective…then the snake slithers back down the way it’d arrived, though it disappears into a pucker, flicking up the hole in his tush — forty years-s wandering the wilderness-ss, a generation dead, and you think you’ve had it rough?

Try an eternity being me.

Hey Hierophanatics! History’s ready, willing, and parable, are you? parabolic, that eternal arc — perpetually relimned, always rainbowed realigned: surveillance aeroplanes ziz overhead, dive down; the zatzatzat of helicopters through cloudcover, their rotors hacking air through a smokebank. Postmortem reports conflict with the broadcasts, contradict our intelligence, which is preferred by nine out of ten, blow our hopes for a sustainable crisis all to futz, Kingdom Came. Contrary to information previously invented — there’s less rape, and even less torture; certainly lesser crimes than are reported, at least those perpetrated upon any humanity worthy of them — as for the rest of the beasts, no comment, next question. Suffice to say, there’s no mad Golgotha stand. No Hail Mary last ditch trenchmouthed teratological fight. Zoglandia rid of all the perfidifiers, it’s been easy and fast, too easy and too fast it’s simpler and quicker to state, which might imply to any dissent a specie of problem, a disconnect amid the chatter of wires, a true resistance still lying in wait, Underground. But rest assured, you — you in your new homes, tucked into your new beds, dreaming new dreams of even newer homes and even newer beds and ever newer kinder tucked within their own dreams, which are yours, too — that it doesn’t, that every once in a while we just get lucky, having barely begun just when victory’s ours, the world already ended on us. This is the first time in our history that we have had so much power, and yet there’s no one left to inflict it upon, which is strange. What hasn’t there been: none of those rumoredly huge hostile armies, welltrained and kept at the ready to outnumber even the most mystical permutations of hope; no ridges clouded with enemy stormtroops recruited from unworlds imagined or not, overcasting in their shadows the valleys we held; no strike force so elite that we can’t reveal even to you its designation, falling its heroes so deep up the river we’d have to deny their very existences, the rivers’, too — first response dead thousands on the uprooted fields outside Austerlitz only a myth, a legend merely useful, parabolic in the extreme, reinforced by a detachment from the 18th irregular regiment of the Very Idea, routed from Hell, the Middle Finger of the Hand of God — Whose lips presently wail the bugle call, sevenvalved echoes of Jericho off the tremulous walls, if any still stand, a sentinel if not for peace then for still.

Threestar General Ariel Support dips a schmeck tabak, an imported brand he plugs deep in his cheek; riding shotgun, he sneers spit to his underlings as they make their seventh and ultimate rotation around the perimeter. At Camp, action’s calming, becoming routine: the horizon’s a mass of hair, of blondhair, of yellowhair and goldilocked, flaxen, platinum, and towlike, ginger, and strawberry sunned, auburn and otherwise Caucasianally burnt: plaits of the stuff, reeds and weeds of it, tangles thicketed, brambles barbed wiry.

Fire from the sky and all that mishegas, the General’s yelling over the engine with the windows cranked down, then we’re hauled in to deal with the mess, that’s the infantry, son…he’s preaching to his driver, a recent enlistee just in from Monsey or Muncie (check his mailcall, a relation once shipped him a challah postmarked Walla-Walla) — you should’ve talked to a lawyer before you signed up. Visibility edging the rim of zero, the same nullity as that of the temp. General Support’s in field camos, his neck and ears warmed with the worn of a stolen chinchilla. Their vehicle’s a wonderful new feldgrau Mercedes, shanghaied just last week outside Marienbad and ingeniously refitted: a turretmounted machinegun, a handful of surface to airs. Support’s spitting orders for an end to what’s been a cursory search: interlocking circles of like Mercedes and caterpillaring tanks never to make butterfly rank, to converge treads and wingless tires at the apex of Zaol II, is what it’s known as — to ensure no one’s survived.

After this last and seventh panzerpass through, this Camp’s to be closed, Zaol officially decommissioned, demoted to the status of field. Then, to be reconstructed, though first, it has to be cleaned: that’s why this maternal embed’s been ordered, maids to be parachuted in later today. Millionthgeneration transplanted maybe they’re Romans pouring dead into northeastern morning, scorched in the freeze. After all, someone has to pick up after them, and their own mothers, they’re dead…someone has to tidy up, featherdust if fosterly at dawning’s remains: they’ll be dressed appropriately for the wetwork, babushkad in shifts, armed with brooms and mops, dustbusters and vacuums galore. Infantry’ll provide support from the ground, in contact with the cover Above. A winged formation suddenly swoops, everyone raises their heads and gasps deep. Call it the Last Crusade, Support’s saying, those used to be Abulafia bombers — Jerusalem fell in a day. This revamped Holocaust has forced them to reexamine their relationship to regression, technology as the way to best preserve the tradition — we got the best military in the world, Support’s saying, forget that it’s the only one now, all its hardware and more menschs than we know what to do with. Answer me, son — what’s the idea of a past when it’s not invoked against any hostile present? with only them making the history now, imposing the history, with only us left? That wasn’t a question — at ease. Have to rethink, rework, back to the modernly basics — rekindling advancement, the resurrection of progress in light of the exigencies of the pure. It’s inevitably fast, in the wink of an eye. We’ve radared Judea. Behold Samaria in all its missiled glory, which severs the earth from the heavens above. General Support straightens his yarmulke, which is fastened around his head on a leather thong tied with a bow under his chin. As for his driver whose name Support doesn’t remember, never knew — as they slow to a stop, he fingers his tzitzit for luck: they’ve been made to stop bullets; his tefillin are bandoliers, one boxed onto the arm he doesn’t shift with, the other piled atop his head, which is shaved and nodding along. All this is an assimilation. Don’t ask — it feels natural enough.

Goddamnit, General Support yells to himself, he yells everything, can you believe? Their dreck stunk in a week. We didn’t even have to fight over Shabbos…turns to his driver idling their Merc: you ever look deep into those eyes, son, I mean deep, cold and blue, unfeeling, stupid, I’m talking animaldumb? Nothing’s there, empty, knockknock, nobody’s home. He opens his door and jumps out to what’d been base camp HQ, his paunch wobbling crazily on impact, he’s put on twenty pounds since assuming command. He spits another thick wad, on a boot, then steadies himself amid the swirly dust and the skeletal sky, places that boot dripping on the tush of an old pair of uniform pants, issued by the renewed Levi-Strauss. He scans the goy’s number from the label — the name’s “Dowd, Peter Paul,” then radios into the SS, those Scrimpers & Savers, an unofficially cracked, ragbony platoon flown in from Upper Merion’s King of Prussia and Affiliate malls up and down the Siburban seaboard, northeast; the emes, a squad made up of the cheapest rattiest bastards ever raised by the most mental of mothers Rodentia: I’ve got clothes to cash, he says, I’ve got your pants here, your jeans, denim, real nice, say, tenthousand pair, decent condition, need a bit mending, shirts, too, size (checks a few collars from Dowd’s fellow grave) mostly XtraLarge, socks and shoes salvageable, Over, why not. Why’d we bother to clothe them, don’t ask me. Or bathe them and house them or what. I don’t give orders, I follow. Wallets and watches are mine, Over, but you better get here right quick for the organs — this Dowd’s passable young, liver and kidneys’ve got years.

At the further curve of their furthest circumambulation, way past the perimeter fence, into the spill of latterdays’ death — last nights ordered a rush, a mad frothing into morning’s calm bed, strawstrewn with dawn’s reddish strandlings, its braided rivers of blood…how they’d been directed to martyr quickfast, doubletime before that doubling month of Adar returned, and with it its moon ordaining that newest of holidays, the festival of Purim rededicated, with the Sanhedrin proclaiming it V-Day — the impassioned observance of our most recent miracle lately usurping an olden salvation, the random succor of lots (who gets to scavenge, who goes without); then beyond…Zaol I–VII, each encampment circumscribing the victory in an inset of rings, as if targets rippling out from camp to camps over fields that are field, plod after plot of this soaked, soaking earth, anything but plain — matted a rasp in barbarous curls, ringlets, snips, spikes, licks, and locks; a harvest wildly wilted this devastatingly untonsured spanse of wildform growth, this if not yet thinning, blondbrowning ground. A scatter of jaundice, scalps expressionlessly blank as picked clean of features…and then atop this all, red heifers, which are less prized nowadays considering they’ve been bred by the hundreds of heads, leaning to fat from their previous starve, they’ve been engineered to graze hereupon, to grave, teething up the crown of the crop: this yellowed to blond, this dark ginger darkening in its tear to dreck’s brown, exposed, with highlights of light henna, last dye grown out, still growing out even in death, lightest red streaked skylike with peroxide. Hair, coming up from the fields, as if grown by the very bald of the earth: there are heads buried down there, they’re up to their necks in it, mouthed nosedeep, at the eyes and then deeper toward the brittle crown, the pastured scalp; not screaming or shouting for help, not even blinking eyes or crinkling ears with wrinkly foreheads, no pain, and not much face left to time or interpret with: worms make their wriggly hurtles from nostril to nostril, socket to whistle of air between what teeth remain. Bodies planted, many suspect they’ve been purposefully planted: be patient, your certificate must be still in the mail…as a reminder to whatever fight might remnant a muster, a Resistance, Underground the underground, a.ny a.cronym that might never have had any name, whether boulder or bold, under which to wig or disguise (it was all, it’s been said, this sick Kapo’s idea, the work of the Austiner Rebbe, unofficially held to be one of the most vicious schmucks ordaining around).

Now, heifers don’t teethe — they tear by shaking their heads, No…denial, declination, as if they’re answering the only question they know: are you yet sated; meaning, hasn’t this been enough…they shake their own heads to shake the heads up and out of the ground, all recognizably mangled, a few still necking onto torso or limb, but most severed, decapitated, bulbously without body — corpses to be zipped up in unmarked shrouds then sold backcountry, to General Support’s old fratfriend, the Rebbe, who it’s been said brokers the deal with his brother, socalled, in truth that’s a rumor a ninetyyearold Palesteinian woman who keeps herself in a suite at the King David Hotel equipped for OR, vitals to be transplanted, alien blood contaminant, an impurity, spreading…as for the heifers, they don’t bite, son, they chew, I mean with their teeth, those dozens of them — they munch at the skull to swallow it all mealy and mushed, on down to the rumen, the reticulum, which is the ruminant’s primary stomach of many, too many; as many stomachs as there are heavens and more, there where these heads would further soften, loosening skin, bone and brain if only for all to be sent back up as cud, cycled, as if to return sustenance back to the earth, as if kvetching, not warm enough, overdone, a petty complaint, says General Support — it’s bitching, forgive them: then, they’d be chewed again, he goes on explaining to anyone he’s ordered to listen — how he’d raised cattle back home on the farm, remembering to his menschs a ranch out in Texas with a hundred head as he tells it, twice that on another occasion, down by the border I’m talking, a youth spent at Mexico’s edge…by the molars, he says, then swallowed back down to the reticulorumen, that’s its name, there past the papillæ, don’t ask, they resemble fingers, like tickling, you know, the acids, a giggling like, then the omasum, you with me, that’s where the water’s absorbed, the abomasum next, finally, the true stomach, the last in the ebb and flow of digestion until the intestine (right here — and he traces its snake down and around the stomach of a teenaged girl who’d died preggers), down that tract then muscled out the other end, he says, dreck and so forth, and then everything begins again, the cycle, sustenance and waste, the most intimate kind of return. Goddamnit, he says, ain’t it gorgeous? Nature, what nachas. This time of year daddy’d be preparing for spring. Insemination time, breeding the chattel. He was the first in the state to give up his pigs. We’re all very proud.

Heads litter the fields of the field as far as the wind. Aeroplanes, they’re no longer surveilling, they’re bombing again, friendlyfire, not quite: clearing the air to the east, destroying what evidence (of just one mensch’s interpretation of inhumanity, we’re talking the Rebbe’s, Protector of this particular quarter), along the way racking up not a few casualties civilian and service; besides the ostensibly humanitarian quorum of motherly maids, airdropped earlier and presently busy at their stations of triage, dusting at pants, removing pants, with their retractable rollers removing lint from garments deemed particularly valuable (at least with solid potential for resale: ostensibly unisex sweaters, sportsjackets, women’s wear, skirts and sundresses wrapped in unlabeled plastic, then hummered on out), nominally Affiliated peasants of almost every precarity’s allegiance are being exploded high from the earth that birthed them in what’ll have to be described as a regrettable instance of pilot error, or mechanical failure, whatever else the addressing of would help us improve what we do while at the same time justifying our taking the lives of these witnessing wretches — more work for the burntembered cows, whose own sacrifice, it’s argued, remains sacred only in how it might, through the absolution of their digestion, obliterate any ashed traces of this operation, our officialized sin the only merit of which has been the thoroughlessness of its execution: to breakdown, ferment then calm with muscles and water, this wasting away, to a soil, to soil — only to grow, which is to dissent, yet again…honorary menschs promoted poor of family, of language and nation, withered stalks impoverished by order and fear into ghastling groups, then assigned to their own dizzying but dwindling clocks of clearing and wood, equipped with pointed staves to pick up sharpfirst what inhuman trash’s been left behind from the camps and, offtime, as slaves, tolerated, to gather for their own any blown crust — what even the heifers won’t low to consume.

A headlong incendiary, no greater than the others except in its threat, only nearer. An aeroplane flying low flying wildly, as if almost out of gas its engines down stalled, heaving forward, convulsing, its womb opening slowly, to birth: a bomb on your house, a bomb on your heads, one for each ear. A lone, ribhuddled heifer, the most starved around, the weakest and slowestdriven, the gruntiest, runnysnouted runt, it’s tearing at this huge hulk, an enormous round of gleaming ordnance or mine netted underneath a knot of corpses, an alien body amongst bodies hard and strange, a pearly prickly fallen thing presently parturient from a tangle of fleshy kelp and weather: two keratinous juts coming out of its sides, curving up to the sharp taper of blades; twin chitinous growths, cutting the air to pierce at the sun — strongstalked, one’s a rock, the other’s a stone. Or else, they’re horns. Around these volutinous spans as white as bone, streaked with blood, a mass of lackluster, thinning more than ever but lately kinky hair, unremembered this shade the dark of underground night, such a saddening change from the previous blond, and lately infested, too, with every kind of louse known to mensch and mouse alike: a few lousy species no sage has yet managed to identify, other louses they don’t even know yet exist, though no one does, and the lice hardly know themselves: they’re just simple creatures; all they want is to steal life from the living, their existence an effortless halflung, to suck the blood of a host — which explains these stains trailing to blemish the crescenting moons that are icicles; that are horns. Up from the unbarbered forehead, which is peely and flaking and dandruffed with drift. About that head proper — amazingly, a miracle, we’re speechless, please, still, give me a moment, I’m being torn up…the horns, they’re grown from a head, and the head, it’s grown, is growing still, from a body, out from the earth, a wrigglingly living wracked sac of a soul: it’s B, me, over here, the Untermensch, unto the mensch under the Under-mensch, udderly menscheddown, demoted and dirtied, I’m full of filth and sick horny, having buried myself to hide, amid a copse of corpses, for safety, to think and rest up, to wait it out, eternity and all, just my luck.

My hide uncovered, and with what left of my hair stuck fast in the heifer’s hurl, about to be ground down into the cycle of putrescent swallow and putsch (it can only be hoped)…I raise my head then my body to elbow the earth, to toss from me the corpses that skeinstick my legs, go to poke at the dumb, animal eyes of the heifer with my not sure which they are whether of brilliantined bone or extrudingly calcified brain, newly grown out, you like them, what do you think: windsharpened, weatherfrozen, their weight, the cumbersome balance…goddamn it, they’re giving me a terrible headache. Attacked, wounded staggery and flabbily farmisht for a fodder on its slip-shoddy hooves, the heifer lets out a rounded vowel, a planetary low, which is swallowed into the echo of the explosioning around us; its mouth opens wider, more, as if to take my head in all the way as a cork to its call; it tears my hair to throw me up not into its gape but onto its back again, hairy if warming…I’ve been here before. I’m saddled in reverse, my face to face the heifer’s tush, my eyes, my nose, my mouthy ears, how to tell it to you so fetid with flies, with maggoted dreck…the entire field around us as if flesh itself suppurant with flesh reeking, putrid, a skin smutted with bodies bombed to fly high and land messy and the butchered carcasses of big innocent cows, turned the same bruisy colorlessness of the blasting around; with the cinerulent singe of such undone, letdown, blowncrazy hair filling the air with a gas of bright blond; how we’re wildly spooked through all this in a stampede of one and of me not guiding but turnedaround riding, more like holding on not for my life but by instinct, with one hand on the nape of the heifer’s neck as thin as a sinew of spine and the other why’s it gripping hard to one of my horns as if I’m riding, I’m guiding, myself — our lonely trek out toward the open, with our four horns slashing at the slash of the wind, how we separate the smoke from the flame.

The heifer, it’s a relation don’t ask me what or which to the heifer that’d led me back home to the cedars of Joysey — we’re two of kind, we are, me and her or it, beast and mensch, each of us becoming imbued’s what I’m saying with the soul of the other: with mine, it talks to itself, prays to be relieved of its burden, which is me, prays to be burdened with relief; and with its, what’s new, I’m humiliated, feeling such a bovine bloating inside, a new tonguing out from within, the snub of an animal silence; how in the beginning, we become exchanged, then merged, and eventually one, then ride on. On heiferback, and then with the heifer on my back and me hoofing us on with it horning me hard — I’m bucking, I’m buckling, getting tired, and so, changing again — we’re refugeeing deep into Polandland, toward the brute, campless edge and its Continentally, civilizationally middling fade into what once’d been Asia or so: to ride out the neglected quarters, unto fifths, the eighths, the eighteenths, and further into emptiness divided only by steps, a hoof-length, a cloveclop; to make our time to lose past huts woodthatched, past loose coops and cribs and pens and hutches, haybale bolus caravanical things left wheelrobbed by the roadside…mudward abandonments of corroded concrete lacking cement, and so falling all over themselves as if in clumsy apology for their very existence, alongside reactor collapses that irradiate green like, how to explain, leaky beehives of metal; through every forest and past every tree ever enchanting this Fleedom (like rooted corpses themselves — they’ll never leave, just lean and lave bare), we’re haunting the haunts, ghosting the geist, only keeping my self, and I mean my animalself, alive on the wet I might suck foul from the tail of my ride. As for it, why worry I think. Arrive at a village, a town, whatever its charter, its barren, sharding itself back together with any localized unguent recently prized: witchbrew of arsenic with honey, sap, and a pinch of spit, mortarsalves of bearfat, cowblood, gevalt, the blood of a blackcock and that of a strungcat, too, lime perfume/the linden bloom the spell, accompanied by a sprinkling of raw eggyolks and pulverized cloves…inspired, I claim I’m a rabbi, often a miracleworker, an itinerant preacher, sometimes, while at others I’m the heifer’s father, or sister, a heifer’s heifer myself — but all of these towns, these dorfs and khuters and shtetls of shtum they’re so over, so burnedup, clearedout, burnt and cleared in every direction depending on wind, that my claims the heifer hooves down into the snow in no language, in scarsymbols, piss sinks, and dungdrops, aren’t their lie for the effort, any favor obtained. Trampledover, then salted with rue to you, vulnerary vervain, and a drachm of oil of wormwood. A night in the poor-house, the almshome, a synagoguepew. I tie my ride up, or it ties up me — stay a while, won’t you; to exhaust its patience loopedround the end of my tether, then to take what I take, untie the ride or be untied by, to hitch its rein to my lower horn, which is my putz I mean and its manifold shed, I mount and we’re off again where, the heifer only allowing me to ride backward now, facing tush, wasteful past. If I try to face front I get thrown, my skin goes fored off, stripped away. And so when riding in hindsight, I pass — by enumerating the heifer’s droppings, for lengths untold, length, I’m telling you, long: three turds a day, hard little heads, eighteen turds, explosive shells they seem, six days’ the timers’ worth until, suddenly…we just stop.

The Market of Spinoza Street

At a river, a moat, which used to be, everything was, had been or did, I don’t know — and then, there’s a settlement further, a mere slip over the water, halffrozen.

It’s the water, though, or the freeze of it, its icelife, its slushy rush as the two of them can never again become separated: the water flowing from the water stilled…no matter its state, the water’s it: the model, in that it’s everyone’s and yet it’s no one’s, too, and how the heifer — it refuses to ford. We stand at the edge of the slick, as it leans us over to lick, slaking its thirst, a quick lapping melt. O to have a tongue, even if leatherette. At its first lick, however, the burden of its bend, it drops, flattens, luxuriously redrugged, shagged…I should’ve kept it to sell or trade: its limbs splayed out in every direction north, east, flat, dead. I dismount by standing up on its carcass, walk around my moribund ride. And the river. How you cross is you have to wait for the sign — there’s nothing mystical about it, however: the sign’s petrified driftwood, or metal. It floats through the moat, floats around and around the moat, on a slow slog with the current. I wait and it comes. It comes fluming past icefloes, its edges shearing off hunks, here it is swirling and knocking and turning around. When it finally nears, is directly across, I step down, it’s only one step to the slab: not tempting to test but a plunge, then to spring up from my fare, passing quickly…thinking, it’s impossible to know depth without falling — how I won’t make that mistake ever again (falling and falling and).

Interpretobold Symbolizetti Allegoriovitch Mystificinski, makes no sense…here’s strange! Estranging! By your leave, comrade citizen, with your consent:

On the other side, this village, this town, if it’s even anything of only one street. What’s it called? What’s its name? I forget, didn’t have the time to notice while stepping down on what’s said. That sign, floating around and around the moat, over and under its weak skinflint freeze — if you’ll just wait by the banks, for a moment, you’ll glimpse it…it’ll come around again and again, have patience, have faith. Everything occurs twice, to begin with, to bore: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce; the third time as the third time, then the hundredth as the hundredth, unlessoned, unlearned. A sign in that many languages, related and not: Spinoza Straße, Spinoza Prospekt, Spinoza Ulice, Spinoza Gatve, Str. Spinoza, Vul. Spinoza, , Spinoza Street…streeting around the town let’s call it entire of only one street, and so it’s no town at all, and yet neither a village, only a poor lick of rubble rimming the hoar of the moat — and so it’s an island, if an island singly streeted with a street that both borders it and is it, too, you with me, a street that in turn islands the island; enough that it’s another refuge of sorts, if more forlorn than any before. And less an island, it seems once you’re on it and of it, than a pock of the earth, more like a pox, the scar of a wound from within, from without, bandaged by a moat so small in hindsight, and so shallow especially when frozen and holding or not, that I could’ve stepped across its surface, its depth, in only one step, singly strided. Forgetting the sign, the bobbing slat of its bridge. Onto this street narrowingly small in width if endless in length, in its loop, apparently infinite in its hellaciously circling circle. A street laden with the miscellaneously malevolent detritus that comes with the keeping of openair files: with papers of leave and conscription, with torn passports, the shred of visas to countries no longer bordered, receipts for burials, the crumple of death certificates, and crinkled, inksoaked m.a.n.i.f.e.s.t.o.s., sectarian statements of divergent platforms and parties, their transcripts of speeches and personnel report files, cadre profiles intermixed with assorted briefs on party discipline, calendar reform, and name standardization, stacks of cash worth nothing of late, bribes to (codename) Eurous the easterly wind; tarnished badges and medals, commendations, citations and trophies, epaulets, lapels missing pins, ribbons ripped, and tattered robes of the law, discarded after having been used as wrappers, too, for food, for milk and cheese and as swaddling clothes, blown along with the refuse of drinks, plastic and tinned, cans of pilsen beer, wineskins, vodka flasks and jugs drained of who’s selling; raffletickets irredeemable, and snowwhite, pupilless eyeballs numbered in an approximation of lotto — a squareless street lined with unmarked, drearily festooned stalls, one impossible to differentiate from another, a uniform gray-wood or other cheap synthetic substance as a matter of coarse, lined down the street more like around the street, and then around the street again around the rivering ice of the moat, its submerged then surfacing sign, then around again and again forever and ever, a fixedly infinite eternal return of the now, its street its mode and its trashy stalls its attributes (if only in the founding philosophical system — which no longer prevails), all one and the same of its Substance, which is indivisible and, also, monstrously gray. All the stalls are made of this vagary, of this allied alloy…I’m just passing it on: that the stalls have been created of coin, of planchet, of flan, are themselves — eventually, with the weather — total coin and as such, apparently, totally changeless: this dull gunmetal nondenominational mix, a circulation without breed as unsunderable, indivisble…impossible for its elements to be molten separate ever again; that weather judging down all through the day and night to mint the stalls’ rooftops and reeded sides in the image of rain, of snow, and the composite between them, to a resounding clinking and clatter of no tender issue, overpowering of every imaginable thought, so destructive.

Strange, too, to notice that no matter the smallness of the street, by which I mean how narrow it is as such circle or cycles are as long as our lives, that I can never find the same stall on it twice, ever again and despite following such directions as I beg openmouthed, despite counting my fingers to numbers I’m deluded to mean: and maybe because there are no wares on display in the stalls (everything, and I do mean everything, is kept under the counter, and one should be hesitant to ask, I’ve been asked), how there’re no signs to the stalls, no numbers either except those imposed by memory in its imperfect ars mathematica…the higher geometry of borderless politics, the containment of illimitable will within mundane circumference, the daily and done — no coordinates save those supplied by the worst and, presently, only philosophy left us, which is that of hope…in that, I’m an expert. And then advice, too, which is the only thing in this market given for free, and in a quantity scarily excessive: actually advice, directions, counseling’s comfort, though all with the aim to a profit of any sort to be made down the line, the length of which is infinite, mortality depending. Along the way the long way around, only the forgotten are to be met — not as much met as to be unforgotten, in advice, in directions, in their comforting counsel: the windword, the snuff or guttering pass, offered to me as to all in hushes, shushes, incomprehensible whispers; such menschs or goys who knows who they are if and when they even don’t, who can care, they prole around, go ghostly a float down the street and so around the moated float of that one uninterpretable sign: Spinoza, who’s he, what’s he got to do with assimilation, with the secularism that’s only adaptation, an evolution toward any new reality, with our governance remade…the intersection of individual life with that of the State, the interstices of mensch and God, and the meaning of what that God is exactly, if not merely the subtotal of us: me, you, Refugee, A refugee, This refugee, viz. I recognize me-in-you, I recognize me-as-you, I recognize only us in proposition and lemma…starvedhollow in tears of scraprags, unshaven into these greatgut beards, this imperious hair atop, too, and those old philosopher eyes — empty, sockets: as if the wicks of candles blown out in their own industrygusts, only smoke; their mouths null islands themselves as they’re opened advising, they’re making their trades, their marking remarx…

This is the Market of Spinoza Street, I’m only guessing…and every day’s Market Day in this sewerside moneyslough, this guttersniping remnant of any vanity’s fair. Upon closer inspection — a breakingaway, a crack in the systems — the street below’s paved with gold, which as it’s abundant is worthless, no good here, take it elsewhere. No new business, no today’s concern (only the wind and its witching flies by what passes for night, which is the same as the day if you’re hungry and thirsty and selling), this is a market of ancient standing, still held to only the most paradisiacal of principles: it’s operated & owned by everybody, which is the same as by nobody, really, if more comforting why, and everyone has the opportunity to purchase everything here, to exchange for everything’s what, trading even each other, even themselves — that’s right, step right up: just decide on a price, whether a trade in kith or in kind, a bargainy cutrated, cut your throat deal, whatever you think of as honest, whatever you think of yourself, whoever you are; all’s fair in vanity, every price has its thing. All these refugees forgotten crawled out of the craterous void, clawed straight out of the jaws of cavernous incoherence, theirs, history’s, no one’s — the island apprehended as if a mouth disembodied: these losers, their names at least, their words, flocking here in a great herding of regret left behind (among their losses, bashful sheep, too sheepish to cross; they wait for their shepherds at the sheer edge of the moat — not desperate enough to dare passage, to enter you have to lose everything), here with the idea of redeeming themselves…realizing I’ve heard, actualizing, too, whatever the term, I’ve been told: in new work, new identity, in new family and so, newer hopes, to sell their souls at the going rate gone, dark-marketed to the loss of supply, the malicious gain of demand; though some prefer renting their souls before buying them outright, others lease out only those names theirs and others’, their dates or occupations, on a plan requiring installments lowly a talent or so less than usurious: you might be interested yourself, only if. Isn’t it time for a change? A revolt? This Market’s open all day every day, weekends and holidays and even the Sabbath included. Actually, it itself is every day and all holidays and all Shabboses, Shabbos — all days indeed and their nights, too, you get the idea: the substantive world centrifugalized to its barest essentials, boileddown in the vat of a centripetal hell frozenover. Might as well abandon abandonment, in with the rest: you have to go through to get out to get in…

Welcome, brother comrade, this I think a goy says as he shuffles toward me: thrush’s egg eyes, strawhair, straw coming also out from his shirtsleeves, bulging from the waist and legs of his pants — my name’s…today, I’m not sure; an escapee much like yourself.

He frowns when I don’t say what.

Here, give me a moment, and he goes to search through his pockets, their flax, to find finally a wipe of newsprint, a whimper of magazinestock.

He holds it up to his eyes, reads aloud.

Boris Borisovich Bourgeois, that’s the name…but you can call me Bobo if you have to.

And me, what can I say?

Or Bibi, B.B. or B., up to you…and then, silence, interrupted only by his perk at the wind: interesting that you should ask that question…if you’ll only follow me, and he leads on with confidence, that’s what he thinks I think but I follow — the conviction only to be found when dealing with the negligible, the middling, the though we’re all equal essentially unimportant…leads me as if to the one stall he knows how to find.

This Kapo, he says as we go, he asked me was I dead yet, and so don’t doubt I answer him sure, whatever you want.

I’m no, how do they say — putz.

I fled for moons, you with me — until I come to this moat.

I’d always known about this place, that’s how it feels…but myth’s what I thought, collusion or women’s gossip, impertinence, superstition, a nightmare in which I’m trying to dream. I know how it goes, it’s a merging like water, how all the systems or even, I dunno, dialectics opposed, they eventually flow themselves into one. And so I crossedover, no regrets. I’ve been here ever since, trying out this Bourgeois thing month to month. As far as identities go, it’s as good as any. Tells me how to live. What’s expected, what’s to expect. We pay with our lives for this life, so we’re told. I’m enlightened now, illuminated like you wouldn’t believe. I know what I’m worth. Exploitation of value as a generational thing, forget it. Inheritance has been gotten rid of, maybe for us, maybe by us; we’re remaking ourselves from the ground up, rib by rib, and all of them iron. I’ve lost my chains, my mind withered away with them — I’m crazy united.

By the way, love your horns.

Here’s what I’m thinking: get involved with the masses, go under — you’ll end up discovering yourself. Among others, as others, who not. You’ll be told who you are, who you want to be, all you need. If it doesn’t work out, refunds are refunds — they’re always for sale…as are sales. Call it a revolution, or not, call it whatever you want. We’re trying to figure out what works next. Think about it and get back to me. I’m changing my life, but I’m open.

The explanations seem simple enough, though classless and Forbiddingly capitalized…Spinoza Street’s an infinite street, not that it stretches forever, no, I’m pacing it and myself with these thoughts, stretching afternoons long on metaphysical wander that still call for feet and cold toes: simply, it’s a ring, a street that serpentinely swallows itself, without crossstreet or throughway, and a moat that keeps it an island with its safeguarding freeze. And, as it’s said, if you end up staying here long enough, schnorring what’s necessary to afford your identity, maybe you sell some things of your own to afford yourself others’, the ring ends up seeming so wide, though its width’s strangely as if honestly narrow, that the street seems almost totally straight. Easy, should be. How straight does it seem? Give it up. And of course, the only presence of Spinoza Street is its infamous Market, fairied and storied as the convergence of all cyclical systems: legendarily, how there are no homes here, no schools, neither synagogues, hospitals, cemeteries, nor God forbid churches, just shops, only, stores, really stalls, unremarkable, with the effect that everyone sleeps out in the open, out on the street, in the Market, as the Market, though even then, at night, through its gusts emptying of pocket and heart, and suffused with trashflight, with whirlwinded discard — with a sky entirely dark except for the rise of a lovelost, in the red moon — the Market surely stays open. Forever. But as for the bell hollowly rung time and again, who knows how it’s kept: it signals nothing, is only a bell, merely tolling. Just as advice is the only thing that’s free in this Bourse, the bell’s the only thing that’s not, if that makes any sense…not for sale, not for rental, no money down — though Whose it is, no one knows, even guesses.

People says it’s lawless, without governance, says this Boris Borisovich if that’s still his name the goy he’s still suspectedly talking, and it helps, of course, that I can’t talk back…but I say no, that it’s the culmination of all governance, of all society’s laws, every one — unified at last in a compromise, if you’re free, if your freedom’s amenable. Watereddown, I’m saying. Smelt into One. Either way, the individual doesn’t exist, whether as class or consumer; whether as a true believer impoverished in ideology, or as a cynic whose purpose to keep sane is to keep spending large. Take me for instance. I began as an amateur, a hobbyist, a weekend dabbler in a new doublelife. Traded in to be a professional, then traded up again to become an expert, an expert what, I forget, an expert nonetheless; I was regarded, you know, vetted, peerreviewed and respected, a mind — you don’t believe me? and he produces from his pockets again a forge of documents to prove (relevance, utility) their straw, then asks me to sign for something or other, don’t ask my ask, beseeches then begs me, with the promise of utmost respect for any identity I might manage to organize for myself, to deliver this sheaf of Xs he’s waving in my face to a woman who she’d find me, don’t worry.

Forget it, he’s gone.

And so, nu: old, gutyellow wart draped with a flag repurposed to kerchief what must be a skull, do you think, peeking inflamed and plumped pussy from a gray dress trimmed in arachnoids of widowed lace also gray; she takes the papers from me and tosses them, filing them in the air, a wind’s document, the contract of clouds, mottled white slabs to flit amid the Market stalls then fall, to wet themselves into pave: apparently, I’m hers now, thanks to my signing or having failed to sign a brief counter, not sure, with Bobo getting his percent, if Bourgeois’s his middle name or last, if Boris and regardless of true patronym, hymn, he’ll identify himself as the agent involved upon the unlikelihood of any return, wherever he went and as what, even if. She leads me to a stall (at the Market, any stall’s as appropriate for any transaction as another, as long as everything’s kept official, which is approved only by ignorance, amid the tacit flux of the shade), walking me a step behind her, then two, on allfours with a leash cut of her hem cinched tight to pain at my neck. No deal, however, can be sealed for all of unutterable perpetuity — eventually, every resolution dissolves…like the paint from the prices, the dye from the uniform flags, the official kerchiefs and scarves in every color of blood. Soon she tires, loses interest, turns me loose, with the reminder, though, that she still owns me until someone, if ever, might own another ante up. Gets a better idea or its backing. Keep near. Stick around. It’s that I don’t have the resources with which to redeem myself. It’s not that I’m totally insolvent, no — I still have my youth…it’s that I never seem to have enough of such assets to better her bid, and if you can’t compete it’s a shanda of sorts but you’re over, you’re done with, you’ll be bought and sold at the whim of any interest with anymore of nothing to lose: how anyone can just stuff you down into the deepest stuff of their hind and so hiddenmost pocket, there to snout around for lint, dust, keys, or sweets, to hunt and gather for an offer ever greater. One day, though, or so goes the local lashon hara, gossip sold from mouth to ring in the ear as true as a shekel is true, as true as a shekel is said to be true: one day, is how it goes, and lo may it be soon though he tarries, a mensch will arrive here with a few new ideas, a handful of new dreams, and, profanely important, the wherewithal to holy them real…the mind, the will, what not — how we won’t miser away moneyed time anymore on this or that investment shortterm, the opportunity to make good on turnarounds in shortorder, thinksmall, no; this mensch He’ll go all out, forever, redeem not only everyone here, but also, in so doing, the Market itself, the entire street and its stalls, repave, revamp, remake its take, reimage the whole: out of pocket, He’ll bet out of the box, then shove it all down into a suitcase, take us with Him to ever newer, evermore innocent worlds.

Waiting I turn my eyes to the sky, its pouch turned again, For everything is in it…airing its lining of air, our last and faulty containment; imperfect in that its blackness is holed through with stars.

Here, where they fall, there…the setting for all revolution, perpetually revolting against even itself: party of the first part I haven’t met in a moon; party of the second part’s never invited. We turn. Everything here’s exclusive to how abject anyone’s able to get, privileged to the extent of how pitiful anyone’s willing to afford. Turn again. We’re drinking too much, smoking whatever will flare. Debates rebut into night, which is morning. Utopian ideals getting yelled down into insult, namecalling, and accusation: you stole my spoonbone, We Hereby Resolve you slept with my wife…keep your clause off her, be still; arguments sobering over what mud we call coffee, the ersatz thaw of the river steeped tea in our dirt. Place your dues in a bag, place the bag in a cup, by the time we’re done meeting it’s melted. Religions are founded, abandoned. Degenerate into governments imposed, then elected, forsaken. Constitutions cried in the sand. I’m keeping silent, how not to, but they think I’m withholding. It feels like we’re all in a search, but for what…even after what we’ve survived, especially after what we’ve survived — we want to keep faith, need belief…

On one hand—there’s serious worth going around, changing minds changing hands, circulations up & down, side-to-side.

On the other hand—everything seems foolish if you think about it enough, practically speaking, and even in thought, too, it’s hurtful, every proposal an impasse, any pronouncement’s tongue a deadend.

We’re all living too real, not really at all.

Two hands, I can count them on one — never mine.

I’m thinking: the nerve of those who’d confuse purpose for self, chutzpah I’m saying, mixing ideology with mensch — those who’d confound us with anything that isn’t an Eden elective. How it’s only a Market if you buy into it; it’s only capital if you’re able to capitalize, it’s only communal if you’re willing to share — and I’m not, either or both.

I’ll live without system or governance, without authority or Law — even our own, whose only purpose has ever been to destroy me, to drain us of blood and wringout the necks of our pockets, leaving our corpse for the auction-block, the prisonblock, for the flames of the oven…I’ll live. I leave on my own, as my own, quitting this veinvend, the frenzied flowed lode of this arterial art, wandering out from the Street: not past the moneyedhalls and hagglestalls, not following the swallowing around and again and engorging, but leaving it altogether, making a right or left, refuting the straightly narrowed, the giving take of moat’s icy margin to water, shattering under my step down and dispersing, feet smashing through into nothing deeper than a shallowness underlying, disappointment, wet heels — to earth if not perfect then mutual, or equal…I’m thinking, nothing but free.

I’m on one hand.

As far as hands go, it’s humungous, haired around the knuckles each the size of a house, its wrist and forearm ascending up to the heavens, to Heaven, piercing the bulge of the clouds — then out the stratosphere, unto what.

Mind the shvitz of the palm…to keep from falling, have to hold on with my own.

A day’s wander from the Market and I’m here at the edge of the known undecided: making my way up and over boulders and elbowy, shouldery cliffs, stepping steeply this road rising high between two valleys below that are hands. Twins on both sides, just over this dusksloppy raphe, descending from the sky, or ascending from the earth, God knows which with the weather, the smoke. All valleyed is marl, a bleached, bony whiteness washedout with gray at the edges, what I’m saying is, vain…how to remember, how it blurs with the clouds as if they’re the joints of lightning limbs, their snapping and pop with the thunder. It’s been told, in rumors, in gossipings heard as historical fact, as geography, too, let’s talk topos: all about the shoe mountain, say, or the hair-pike, I’ve been there, climbed that, horsts up from any ultima graben…the Hill of Glasses, and the Suitcase Peak, I’ve been around, made the grade, scaled the heights — tectonic remnants, artifacts of destruction past, the war’s spoilings the heaped remains of sacrifices comprising the altared cliffs upon which a future has to be founded. A nest, an egg hatched, halfshelled…but this. I descend again a valley, go on to the other hand — it’s hard to believe, even now.

Questions, count them up by the fingers. Who knows where such hands have been? I don’t, just fall myself down into their cup.

This other hand’s huge itself, similarly haired around the knuckles each the heft of a house, its wrist flexed to forearm outstretching above.

I’m on this hand, then go from this hand to the other, that that’s previously this — what to do?

On one hand, I sit in the shade of a callus and think; on the other hand, I sleep tight among its fingers, between them.

On one hand, I lap at the wet of its palm; on the other hand, I gnaw its nails out of stress, and then mine.

On the one hand…I should turn myself in, and on the other, what good would that do?

Questions…I commute them a back and forth, crossing the fingers, fording my fortunes — Septentrio, Meridies, Oriens, and Occidens be their names, the orientations of their previous flows: lifelined, heartlined gullies and gulches, stonedry riverbeds, the graves of streams their own markers frozen to rock, their meandering wanders foretelling in script and in squiggle ways longer and harder than any would ever keep on. On one hand, what about my people! Questions, I’m asking the questions. On the other hand, what about my people? That’s what I want to know. How these fingers feel for each other, they feel one another…they’re elementally stiff, they’re ancient yet reminding themselves they’re still alive, maybe, how despite age, all their wear and the rheumatoid arthritic denial, they’re still living fingers and powerful, knuckled and full with flesh and toughened, so strong — perhaps those that’d made the world’s what I’m thinking, the original digits: they formed the head of the earth, poked the oceans, pressed into the softnessness of the depths, molding flesh…they’re giving a creaking, a cracking of wood or an earthquake, a skyshake this quivering shiver to fall — I’m knocked from my feet to the foot of the thenar, the Mound, that’s what it’s known as around here, the valley’s slow rise toward the thumb.

On one hand, the Garden took me in when no one else would.

To make itself into a fist, themselves into fists, with which to smash the tabling world.

On the other hand, they’re no longer in power, the Garden: Die — no thanks, I hardly knew him…this I’ve heard on one firsthand shaky, from a source as reliable and, too, as loud as the na zdorovyes I’d stood him, little flowery and watery vodkas flowing seaward from environs northeast: from a refugee he was who’d been saved by this mensch who he’d worked with a mensch, he’d said, tushdeep in the Solution, I’m talking two Tours’ worth of Unaffiliated Disposal (UND) behind him not that he’d liked to remember it much — but then again, on the other side of the other hand, its always unknowable face, that same mensch had also told me my parents were still alive, are, and happyhealthy, he’d said, Shanghai where, hic or sic, a slurred Shangri-La…that near the Mound as well, not sure, don’t know, up near which Zodiacal finger, got me, Pollex, Medicus, just past the Index girls keeping low in the line designated for love — you’re next, what’s your name, don’t be shy…Amularis orphans gathering ash and toxic particulate they’ll heat for a meal over the pulse of a wrist, since morning flush and flooded with life; keeping theirs from the Auricularis displaced, hiding their wretchedness amid pruning and hairs, the hump and hunch of the wrinkles — just point me in the right direction, I’m thinking, I’ll wrong myself from there, find me lost. None of these fellow wayfarers to give me the help of a hand, those or theirs: they ignore, though only after they’ve ascertained I’ve nothing left to steal, not even a pocket, a hole, the pocket of a hole — the depths of the valleys clawed out below us. None understand me’s what it is — all my palming myself off from thought to, indecision to, no one with whom to share my dissatisfaction, my unhappiness, this inability of mine to just nose my way out and pick, goddamnit, to fingerselect, to just settle down on one hand, or the other, and then just stay there, that’s that: stay deluded, and justifying your heart out; what everyone has to do, eventually, with the choices we’re handeddown from our birth. Pick a hand any hand then stick with it, shaken, choose your choice then die in the grip of its consequence, no.

I make night from one to the other — to live or die, to wander or stay with the sun, dawn to dusk, whichever at hand, its rising at one, its set at the other. Then, at fullest moon, a night seized with light, halfway between hand to hand to…mouthless, without speech: as both fists — they just clench, suddenly; their arms that had been other ridges and rims of other valleys, they outstretch the borders between…they lift themselves, become lifted, slowly, then up through the clouds, musclebound: how they weigh in the air, how they weigh the air, a moment amid the luminant sky, then eclipsing its moon…as if balances to weigh, too, the once sheltered now falling life they’d held tight with meaning, dim squalls and sobs tumbling through the mossy cracks between fingers opening, fingers spreading this widely, their crevices splayed — scaled high up as if in a benediction of fall, a blessing of crash, judiciously unto the Highest all then smacks, grubs grandly, and whipsup, is whippedup through the wisps into sky or Heaven, if that you prefer; these two hands disappearing, as if they’d never once been of our earth: without charity, without benevolence, grace or warning, their entire ascension in its cracked chap jointed point resembling nothing so much as a shrug…as if to say, sorry — I tried.

To find myself stranded with no thoughts, no needs nor wants, neither why, without hither, thither, or slither: snakey, how there’s no choice anymore, only chaos, a blood relation to night. I make my way up its mountain, a hill of mud, a hillock of bodied trash mounding bloodflecked — this mountain the middle ridge of the two valleys created whether by or as the cup of the hands, following their rise as unearthed height seeking between to clasp prayer for a peak. Tapering, wicked. A braiding of dirts by the weather. A limb’s wounded leg. An armway this straproad, this strop’s path, tabakfingered pointing the way between the marked lay of the hands and their arms outstretched, disappeared — and now, toward me comes this mensch, stooped as small as his bird is wings, is shabby and large.

I think, I can’t help it, is that who I think it is…come again.

Now, understanding that history means so much to us with its names and dates, and the way in which those things serve to make such history relatable, real — allow the Record a moment in which to record its ecstatic detachment, in which to renew its promise to serve the relations of future generations, future degenerations, with an unburdened account of the following…who could believe. Apparently, the rumors are true, that the gossip of the great has once again proved to be verity — the lashon for once having harangued the right mensch. Him, he’s the Pope, or once was, Pius Zeppelini da Foist, I’d recognize him anywhere, even like this: having exchanged almost everything of his save the yarmulke down to his now naked feet, robes for robes, his formerly supreme eccleisiatical power traded in for a powerlessness even greater, that of the nobody, the nothing ascetic, as if a king undercover, gone slumming, among: he has to live, goy’s got to eat, bird’s got to fly’s what they say, so I’ve heard — and so he’s converted, become as a schnorrer remade, Propheting Elijahstyled; I slacken my pace, hope my face won’t betray me. His riches ragged in three threats flat, he goes town-to-town, making the updated beatitudinal circuit urbi et orbi, his lapsed holiness bestowing blessings upon any head, in exchange for alms, psalms, straw, hay, mashke, noshke, and prutahs, anything else you might give how he’ll take; the once Holy Father and believe it, I can’t, behold it with your own allseeing thirdeye — he’s the nihilmensch secondcometh, thirdhanded bearing news of anything he can remember, invent on the wing, on the fly. Dethroned, how he couldn’t sit still anymore, began to walk, abandoning the pretense to any Dietrologia, it’s what you give that’s what he gets, and so one Shalom to the Vatican and another Shalom to the road; how he’s become likable, almost too, understandable, makes you think, makes you feel, real salt of the earth this mensch just wandering the earthly See, globetrodding Messiahways, the humblest thing you’ll ever stumble across, I have, it’s slowing me down, tripping me up — not even rocks can compare, not even thorns can compete — for leagues, for parasangs of stones silenced in any way of ice, of mud, body, and bone. My son, I’a thank you…goes his spiel: works most of the time, so it’s been said by lesser — may you be blessed with’a many masculine kinder…

Into a village, a town, any of which, his accomplice the stork leads him by a leash rendered from pallia. Once out of town again (and it’s so hard to know when you’re out given all the ruination, these days), Pinchas, that’s what he wants you to call him, Phinehas if you must, he again leads the stork, holds a crosiered stick to help image his pace, just a wither splintered from the crook of a bishop found dead, in his other hand the ecclesiastical sash tied tightly around the gullet of the stork soaring above him — tugged this way, then yadda. As a schnorrer, nu, nothing’s too good for him: when he can, he’ll demand the best, and when he can’t, he’ll kvetch there’s no better; his dream: to merit upon the strength of his soulwork alone maintainence by charity unto the custom of his lifestyle former. Of course, without that naggy I’m here for you shtick — just got in the way, cramped his kneel.

Why shouldn’t I live like’a dat? he’s always asking the molting, weatherworn stork, who’ll never answer him if they want to keep up the act, the showy front that’s keeping them both fed and warm.

Da highlife, don’t I deserve it?

Hymn, a goy’s got to dream — have patience, have hope: the last two coins begged from the eyes of a cardinal beggar, asleep by the side of a road: he’s taken his wine, too, a shard flint.

Denied Jerusalem’s asylum by the Abulafias, begrudged immunity in the Shade, condemned to vagabond on, how he attempts to schnorr all the spoils, all the trapping pelts of the Papacy — but without that pesky Title, without that puny responsibility rub that was both miraculous and, admit it, a bitch. A pain in the prostrate. Frontmensching with his pet stork, this savvy bird with, you’ll excuse me, just a bit of an ego, a bite or peck of a complex, though his only friend he’ll say as if right on cue, his best, how he loves it like the son it’d never deigned to deliver him (though offhours, he argues against its silent grudge, threatens clipping wings, cementing its feet — once again raising the topic of tricks, just a handful, wouldn’t hurt, a little tightrope, juggling herrings, all while riding a tricycle); together, they slum plotz to platz, vagadicht raggy from court to empty of belly, shack shedding its lean to strawpallet, strippeddown to plank to nail at his sandals whether stolen or lost, and so with feet bared to thorn the road again, bloody: following the muds, wherever they take him, you know, he goes with the floes, I’m impressed, God, we all are.

It’s begun snowing again, and the stork flies over him, to keep the freeze from his holy.

It’s the gesture that counts, though it won’t buy them supper.

I meet him on the fly, what do you know. Slowly but not too, make to pass him unknown. My face held down not to respect his fallen estate as much as it’s my begging not to be hassled. Just another fellow traveler, I’m trying for…yet another wayfaresharer, we’re all related somehow, somewhere, down the road a turn or so, one town overed. Only thinking, as I leave him what a shtarker with his stork, unkempt and I think also kronk, it’s unfortunate, always regrettable…what can I do, he’s my kind but not my type.

Wish I could, bless him.

Then thinking, as he’s gone disappeared, reborn into nothingness, into the dim that always accompanies and yet is itself nothingness, too: the night, as voided by night…and then, by the darkening of night with a storm, this windwhip, such a merciless fire and fall — was that a wink, maybe…how he might’ve winked, then again maybe not, a mote of muck in the eye, a mite of whirling weather. I heard no words from him, though, as if I could speak one in return…and there were no signs exchanged, neither secret handshakes, nor any hermetic knowledge passed; it’s wishful thinking — next time, we’ll prepare. In passing, I’ll say I felt only a chill, a clasp gusty…how to account, and yet how not to: I’m sorry, but I think he tried to pick my pocket. For what, for passing — all of nothing, nihilum.

To embolden, I lash my back with a final foreskin, trailing scrappily from behind me devilforked as if a tail: sheddingly shod with holes and pincer pricks and stinger rips and smudgy tears as if from ink or ash but holes…the serpentine sprig falls now, becomes furled into a cloud, eluding all grasps, dispersing toward a summit. I only go with it, then, north by east, meaning irrespectively up…in an ascension mundane, only another form of high left for luft, the irreparable air — then without grounds going still dazedly, dizzily, further. At the height of the mounding, if that, too, can be believed: shaky as it is, founded unsound, with the mudmix slinging around…sloppily fluming, a mess — there’s an opening. Here above the horizon, a hole — it’s a door I think, it’s a window; delineated skyspace, a demarcation skyscaping; an air escaped, set aside: an old provocation imposing anew, the idea that the window’s the hole in the sky, or that the sky’s the hole in the, you understand, exhausted. Is the window that that’s bound? or is the window that that is around the bind? just asking, just asking.

Here’s where the Pope’s coming from: this tickytacky woodenchair militantly straight of back, in which to rest a while amid the remains of its neighboring pissedupon fire (one leg of the chair, the northeastern, had been amputated, then snapped for the kindle), set atop this peak sheltered from the face of the wind, sheltered from the very faces of the wind’s northern face and the wind’s eastern face, by this lone wall white as it’s been so far faceless, save presently set with that window without glass I’m imaged both into and out of at once, my reflection in the rise of the sun through the morning — as the Law had been handeddown upon that lesser mountain, the least of them no more than a paunch or early pregnancy, a mere bump or stump’s crop, and there with each of its spattered tablets understandable to all right to left, why not, but left to right also, scribed to our scrutiny from the burst cheek of every wind that’s both weather and the breath of weather’s God, graven with fire by the foremost finger of That force mediating in a nailed incarnation, too, don’t you know? And the only way to pass is to pass through it, to the nothingness just…only a burl of cloud, parting. I arise and make the last step, from the chair wobbled to lean against this wall lifting myself onto the wall, creaky the chair’s giving beneath me — as I lunge, make a leap, to snake through the sill unglassed, to worm headfirst over the hunch, and then through it such hurt, slicing myself to flame on the sill, its knifely edge, a sacrifice of self here at gut…a humpwound, it’s like birthing; I’m bowed to pierce at myself, at the window and wall, with my horns. A glow from under the saggy flag of my — womanhood, blood burning to grease passage over, my arms now and legs now and balance, just balance, meet me halfway…to raise my horny head upon the Other Side, and then — to behold.

The Last Supper

A recipe for Baked Mother…rest assured, it serveths all of her son(s), whatsoever be the number.

Ingredients:

1 Mother, preferably yours

(others’ maketh for a poor substitute)

3 Onions, their size depending on size, weight, & structure of Mother

Olive oil, with which to anoint

Salt, kosher

(don’t her wounds deserve it?)

Instructions:

Purify

Shaveth

(everywhere)

Then slay:

Slaughtereth her with a knife, ritually only if the most mere overture to kashrut’s desired.

If not, then gaseth, bullet (to temple only), but let’s not be crude: we know, don’t we, that the methods are all out of bounds, which is to say…boundless — the outermost limits of resentment, the strain of our memory bordered by memory, it’s always memory, it’s always…

Imagination surely helpseth.

Be creative.

Though be sure to causeth as little damage as possible to the flesh. Be sure to causeth her not much pain.

Note: Drowning imparts a wetness that is undesirable, resulting in a toughness of the flesh (unless she is drownedeth in a brining, or curing, solution. See PICKLED MOTHER).

If you can’t bringeth yourself to kill your own mother, then have another do it, preferably her husband, if your father, or any other immediate relation to the woman (one’s siblings are suggested: remember, however, that money must not changeth hands).

Just prior to the onset of rigor mortis, deeply rubbeth her with salt, then anoint with the oil: anointment should taketh place twentyfour (24) hours prior to serving, during which time Mother should be kepteth at room temperature; then, placeth gently, do not force, the three onions, one each into her mouth, vagina, and the orifice that she calls her “tuchus.”

Placeth in a house of an oven, preheatedeth to 325° F.

Baketh until sunset, or golden.

There is no substitute.

There is nothing.

During baking, anointeth Mother often in her own juices with baster, mop, or favorite sweeping broom.

You might want to consult the maid (you might wanteth a maid).

Carveth, and enjoy (consulteth our chapter on Anatomy, if need be).

Useth teeth and shorn hair for garnish.

Eyes maketh for a most special delicacy.

Do not watch water.

Do not hope.

Note: An interesting flavor may be attained by bakingeth Mother alongside, or underneath — dependingeth on oven capacity — your father, her husband, or grandparents (his or her parents).

Also note, however, that the flavor of Mother will be significantly lessenedeth the further removed the relation.

Remember that blood must mixeth with its own.

Remember, zachor.

Though never under any circumstances of denial, anger, bargaining, anything whatsoever depressant, attempt this recipe on yourself.

Unless.

Leftovers keepeth well.

Mother is delicious upon the Sabbath, and within the week’s intermediary days — but will always become spoiled before the conclusion of the following Shabbos.

Upon Mondays freezeth, and upon Thursdays thaweth her out, then keep her refrigerated.

To avoideth spoilage, wrap Mother well in both her dresses of maternity, and of wedding.

Do not leaveth her uncovered.

Not ever.

Serveth with sacramental wine.

Let the bottle chilleth between your thighs overnight.

A moon lights full above them, and winter.

While the Kabbalists among us hold that everything in this world is as a mirror of the Other, the next and its everything, which is then not entirely everything — discuss…what’s perplexing (Perplexity being the only named universe, able to accommodate both the Kabbalists and Him) is which is the reflection and which the reflected. Or else, how both are of reflected and reflections beyond.

This, we’ve drunk before.

Our cosmology needs only to ripen a moment — then, all will be done. Finished, kaput.

All this time they’ve been waiting outside, just outside the door.

His house, yours, mine.

New guests, old late. It’s so deeply winter, so lately winter, and yet latening still, it might as well be spring, let’s agree. They’re waiting out in that freezing sheet of fall, sheets, fitted sleet and flattening hail, them the great Huddled, shivering sleepless in a week’s worth of tattered up against the fattily marbled frontsteps: some lean, others squat, leansquat fall lie amid the puddles of stock the weather’s inflicted, infected, cloudorgans, nimbusglands…their kinder, so wellbehaved, even courteous, all would you be so kind as tos and thankyous, can you please pass and I appreciate it in the past they’re fighting again, incorrigible gangs of meat kinder vs. milk kinder they’re rolling a tumble in tantrums of sauce, spatterings, tussle’s splatter, angryred, rage-gravy, sickly slick mixings unstrained, unholy dressings and impure preparations, small heads going uncapped gone uncorked in the chaos, brandnamed I forget, or whether generic, their spilled paste on the sidewalk, a waste, and them, too: they’ve been waiting, waiting, too long they’ve been waiting forever — their salttears, their breadcrumb whining, their pounding on and knockerkneading of doors that open to be only fudged shadows, toffeemocha delight, with their fists raw, their fingernails scratched down to sliced through if not merely nicked flesh upon panes of air whipped up in whirrs of sky’s mixer, air’s whisk…it’s a superflumina out there, and appetizingly enormous, they’re pushing and shoving, forking to knife, tumultuous; all having begun politely enough last Shabbos this’ll end, if ever, if any of them remember to set their timers, which are their tickytock hearts, in limbs pulled from sockets, noodlestretched, dismembered strewn in shallow stinging pools of lemonjuice and lime, citric stagnant at gratings clogged, a flow sewerseeking, the lowest ground amidst such layercaked, panbrowned waste, these remnants sprinkled atop heaps of stems, these spit pits, and seeds, the compost cholent, the sewage let sit. The hot spice of dessert tea scented with excrement, sugary urine. Ones nearest the door, the door the front one scratchedup, tore at desperately, its window fogged to strudelthin dough, were an eternity last week ago trampled to death, then buried under stuffings of humus, heaped far off at the edge of the lawn, at the neighbors’ fence of snakes, posts from whose mouths hang singleservings of signs, the spleening of liver…Keep Out. Private prop. Violators will be, and will always. Out that far at half-&-half, the halved again flow of laneless road — entire families dock at sidewalk to disembark meaty junks, pareved barges they’re hollowedout, scooped from steerage from huge ships of melon unripe and sweet, destined, themselves, for here’s lost Friday, this last Sabbath of Shabbos, all with their own recipes, all of their own recipes, their own ways of doing things by which everything and everyone else is heretically wrong — waiting to prepare, for only the preparation of waiting. Time. They approach, drag themselves dribbling froth along the marzipanly edged path of lawn laid with macaroon slates they arrive at the stoop, step as ingredients supererogatory if inedible, too, to the door. And then the porchlight, a bulbed berry, flicks on in its drupes, and they turn their plated faces Heavenward, awed.

Their appetite’s for in, though — a taste for in only.

A bundled bunch of menschs tight in their suits as if kishka, stuffed derma, threepiece intestinal, they drip the gravying fobs from their cavities, stir the clocks.

Mothers, washing faces of suet and grease, sit sucking the schnapps out of the ears of their kinder.

One innocent son aged much over the interminable last week, stands. Moon laid the egg hatched to darkness, the black of a starless burn.

Then, lightning flashes flank’s vein, illuminates the house: the standing invitation threefloored, forever ripening, its siding all peel and rind stuck together as if with the mortar of honey, too sweet…

Led by this son the perpetually Late muster one last squash altogether: this mass snapping, a thunderous husking, a shelling, the lamblike twisting of necks (there’s a fierce churn from the back, the sidewalk, from the edges of the lawn they fold themselves in, away from the serpented fence, its sticks hissing up at them in the stirring wind, writhing free of their plant to slither at them dumbly, snaking themselves deep into the fruit of fallen apples, getting themselves stuck there, snakes with apples for heads, apples where their heads should be, tongueless, harmless, without fang; without any senses save their slick green lengths, they hiss their slither over one another insensate, collide stupidly, crash their heads of apples up against one another until rodents assemble to rat away at the appled heads, nibble, gnaw, down to the cores, coring down to the dead and the slithering stops, the snakes stiffen again to sticks, to cinnamonbark, utensils without use)…piecemeal poultry, baked breaded chickens peck at one another, pluck each missing which quarter, a drumstick, a wing here, there a thigh — a flightless haunch, schnitzel; menschs chasing the boiled eggs they drop in tripping falls of pigeontoes (oy, so the squish of seasoned squabs); above, gefilte rolled together gefülte out of thousands of their forefishes since smoked out of existence, how they swim along on a stream of fleischig borscht (dairy gust blowing, too, uncleanly coming from the opposite quarter in cream both soured and sweet), slices of candied carrots over their eyes then one set atop each as if a yarmulke, parsley payos, in their wake wisped a fringe with dollops of horseradish cut through with the richness of beets. Gigantic beans droop from their stalks, dripping their sauté of garlic, oil, a pinch me now of overexcitement to overseason the already marinated earth, cooling below. Raisinrocks. Nuts of stone. Glaze of a soil never to shmita. Bound sheaves of noodle propped against the siding skin of the threecar garage. Orphaned opossums, widowed raccoons, lonely squirrels recently unbound from neighboring nutshells if only to face the indignity of lawn and illimitable rangespace, forage in the tenth of scraps set aside for them or mourning. Assembled hold to the windows as if they’re servingtrays silvered by lightning’s knife, then tilt them to reflect into heat what gleam might survive…the screens of summer ripping this spring, the thrum of their mesh in the wind the throating of thunder: bend them into bowls, to collect through their sieve the precipitate wine — the pitpat of sacred Manischewitz, mixed impure with a melt of snow milchig, saltwater teared; this dilute flows down the street, into the looparound, a curbbound reservoir of chilling blush rendered filthy with stirs of wrapper, packaging, shells and yolks, globbed atop with the anoint of oil both vegetable and unhealthily not; (dietetic) seltzer shpritzes up from the scandal of potholes, unpruned danish-pits, bagelvoids of pumpernickel, of everything and nothing, indistinguishable…gutters run with the blood of cows, overflowing the sidewalk, hunks of dark chocolate, tufts of licorice sprouting through cracks. Moustaches stain a sweep across, they baste, an attentive beardmopping: they’re kissing in as much as they’re able to swallow, it’s fine by us, we won’t tell, any combination, just needs something more, just a touch, a pinch butter or milk or another nonkashered…who’s going to whisper the recipe, the ingredient secret? Indulge, more like divulge. This is holy ground, holied. As much as anywhere, lately. And unburnable, too. Anything’s permissible here, if here — all under the strictest Development supervision, which is the mandate of gluttony usurping yesterday’s underdone glatt…

And the house — its stem pokes high above the Development, a flagpole without flag.

Their hunger is this, only to sleep tight within its peel.

This son, he wanders further, near: the door, it’s peeled open only to Him…only He can peel it, is how it can be said from the other side, from within — unlock the pericarp, up its windowshade…Him the taster, He who savors, Him to sample prospect for the rest; other hopefuls are stacked in failure at the stoop, exhausted atop the organ of the welcomemat, a lung, wheezes Shalom. Door peeled tightly behind Him with a last spurt of zest, as if a final whetting, a sharp cleansing taste of what’s to come that only hungers, humiliates more…He’s determined, to be squeezed into the ineffable core: hands modest in their pockets, mouthpocket shut tightly around His tongue, not wanting to partake, not yet, He’s not yet worthy, must merit the merit He’s already been given, has been born to, before…walks through the fruit of the house, the homefruct, its wedges separating under His feet, His steps raising nectar to seep through the hallways of His wander, to seep as the very hallway of His own worming, imperfecting, impure; His writhe to tail behind Him the threat of no exit, the trail of irreversible pour; this dragged juice almost to drown Him in sweet, in the rottenly sweet and, too, in His own secretions, the wordless but salival…the hallways that separate the sections, ending in peel; He’s slipping, regaining footing, exhausted with stick, the nectary cling of His panting, of breath heated as sweetened, steaming, then a slide into the fruit itself, its very sacs full and fouling, facefirst He’s entering slowly, emerging even slower and dripping, slowed in mold, its fuzz attendant upon bowed brow, at His own pits, His heavy sex then around the tiny stems of His nipples…Him subsisting on the wet of the air through His nose as His mouth’s still set shut, refusing to know the fruit for the sake of sustenance, its and His own — sustenance that’s refused as it’s not yet enough: to deny, to limit, must save Himself, not to eat us all out of house, out of home…no, it’s that there’s only one nourishment He’s thirsting, this single savor He’s after redemptive, and it’s not to be found inventoried on any presently pulped shelves, out of stock. After a time, He finally arrives: a clip of the coupon, a swipe, then a quick counting of change, day the seventh, Shabbat. In this — the inmost sanctum of fruited dwelling: the altar of the putamen, the stoneheart, rockempty, then grown from it, to hold it void for His presence and only His sought, Him alone…eventually, now: into this space hollowed out amid the kissing of pure fruit all around — to enter into its womby air; then, to dwell inside it, forever, as its only life…as its seed.

Introit then the last days, the latest hours of failing light…thrallthroes we’re talking, dying moment of this Snowdom, final flakes, get yours in: days ending earlier until it’s just late again and still night; darkness upon the face of the ocean’s faces, the land’s, the lands’, makes no difference, round or flat, gray or gone. Die’s face is that face, too, there’s only one of them now: the face of exhaustion, depletion, the victim’s, that of glorified powerlessness, is what we have in mind; having wasted his money and people, resources desourced, insiders made out…beyond all faces, in truth, and all face, genug, gone deep-far into the cold barren world before a mouth said ever a word. Daydayeinu, enough. What’s been has been upended. Houses have come to ruin. Developments have been splitup, homes sundered. Governments displaced, dissent gagged, bagged then thrown curbside, trashed with the other treyf, for export whether to the Third World or best offer.

Unknown, no one wants to know him, not in this House (Hanna, putting her foot down into the baldspot of the carpet, the loose tile, the mound of the pets’ grave, the hole for the hill of the ants) — I forget, what we say: not ever again. Die keeps himself tightfisted, lasthanded, holding onto what yesmenschen left (only his lifers, righthands), no more even odd admirers, weird hangerson: while still meeting payroll, he’s arrived under the escort of Mada, Hamm, and Gelt, four tickets flying quiet, bribed underclass with the last assets of empire; they’ve managed to evade the roundups, so far, the selections, knock wood, wrinklegrained head…greased their way through the iron lines, barbed borders, handing out what little keepsakes have kept — mandate souvenirs, not much, mementos of what might’ve been. How, they’ve managed to keep small, lowprofile, motives suspected unsuspected to even themselves, operating on opportunistic provision, provoked by deathsilence, tolerated amid a pity that Authority allows whether by divine luck, long chance, or short memory; they’re kept only by the merit of sloth, of past friendship, sentiment, nostalgia, allegiance, alliance, owed out of favors — you name it, you’re dead…though such lazy silence, contrary to any flattery they might still lavish upon their mere gettingby, meagerly whether bribed or on credit, it’s not theirs — not to allow them the identification of mission despite how their delusions might entertain…rather it’s for Reb Shade, for him to accomplish his own: don’t humiliate anyone, keep shtum, headlines backpaged, the news demoted to the old left atop a den’s couch whose pillows exhale only the whispers of shadow, indirection, misdirection, the hallways rearranged, the corridors of power redecorated in sophistic earth tones. The order’s made known: not given like Law, it’s revealed as if prophecy, if only in a nod, with a cold wink, or chironomy’s snap: a goahead, give them the rope — and with it let them dig a grave for their graves, six holes deep; let them be taken care of, is what it means, by all means, but privately, negligibly, ignoble this method, this assent understood: nothing to do with us, never happened; I don’t know from what you’re talking, I’ve never even been overseas. A ritual washing of hands, then a wringing to dry, but with what appropriate blessing, which benediction to cleanse. Blessed Art Thou, King of the Unversed, Who Commands Us to Cleanup After Ourselves. Who Minds Us Our Messes. Recalls Us to Tie Up Loose Ends. Blessed Art Thou, though You have commanded us but couldn’t care less, what we’re hoping as we sharpen the knots in our shovels…after all, how is that possible: to kill a goy already dead to them, as He’s been decreed, too. Amen to the end of such questions, though we’ve already forgotten to Whom we all answer. Rest assured, this has happened before.

Die lies pale and swollen, older then ever, years, a week or so unshaven, wrinkly Roman elephant gray.

He lies under the atmospherically canopied coffin that is his bed, under the giving mattress breathing slowly and even, trying to keep hidden, alive.

His toes are numb; his medals are stuffed down his pants.

Mada’s in the wardrobe, face slammed up against its doors, glassed in dust, its wood stabbed to death with figure heavy on the malign…Hamm’s behind the curtains, thick reddened drapery resembling the vomit of widows: he stands a shadow in its fall…lamp — greenglass; hatrack, the wardrobe, a desk — unlit; Gelt’s shut himself inside his luggage, a trunk.

The Hotel Under the Sign of the Hotel’s time has come: just about to descend to table, as it’s been told…they’d heard voices up the stairwell, drafty appetites, and growls, bellhop’s bell going ding dong ding, the church of the frontdesk, its keyspanned communion; then, feet in lockstep, locked boot and heel stepping up the wide spiral, one flight, take a breather. Others say the tip had come from an obliging bird, some say a dove, flown in the window; a note left on the pillow in lieu of sweet nothing, again that nod or wink, the handshake of a bellboychick, the blush of a maid, as arranged. No loudspeaker, no softspeaker, no rustle official, an important announcement misspoken, misheard, even unmissed. Management’s bought off the regime long enough (sheltering foreign journalists, quote unquote independent observers, diplomats, ambassadors, obstreperous officials of every state making last appeals for nationals lost), but now it’s all about omega, about settling accounts: one moon of stay, roomservice every morning each night, a laundrytab, a shoeshine, and don’t forget to tip generous the turndown. Will that be cashiered, or corpsed. Downstairs a mensch in a uniform as tightly bespoke as a spiderweb, preyedover with phosphorescent stars and stripes of a madness seemingly specific only to the highestranking, sighs as if in warning to himself, takes care of their bill with a thick wad of currencies: bills ripped apart then stuck together again piecemeal with the sperm of the stallion, without any thought as to provenance or denomination, old sidelocks ironsided portraits, frazzled beards — then gets a receipt for his superiors, we all have them, even the best of us. Upstairs is still, almost timeless, with most scholars emphasizing the almost, not quite: none to make a run, to head to any embassy’s pearlygated guardhouse drive, ring the bell and stay to amnesty, bring the flowers or wine; there are none left, autonomies, and with the Garden fallen to ashes…there’s nowhere outside the ghetto, nowhere that’s not the ghetto, nowhere open, all’s walled, nowhere new, not even Palestein’s elite: and so Shalom to our brother Arab hordes converted, what nachas we’re shepping the schlep of our baggage to come over and visit, O how you’ve grown! Jerusalem the genital, generational jewel, kvell in peace…the Roses of Sharon risen again, we flock to you now as to honey or eligible sisters, what discounts might you offer, what deals might you make for your kind!

Regarding the occupants of Room Number Six, it’s been related: how they aren’t processed, aren’t to be trained to a camp, and — gedenk gedenk, there’s no time for that: we have schedules for such things, please, playful though they are, timetables based on contingency alone, there are interpretations to respect, goddamnit, adherence to the earth’s spin, you know, deadlines dwindled two-by-two, to one then none and, anyway, it’s quicker without that fuss. Mishegaseous, foolishkeit. Ludicrous. Say what you will still the menschs ascend, they come up tall and slim, fairhaired and eyed, two-by-two in an endless doubled row bowing to double back down the stairs to the lobby; holding their uzis and assaultrifles, Palesteinianmade, like they know what they’re doing, they probably do. Topquality, highcaliber, I can get you a steal. As for the starstriped, pitystripped mensch leading them, let’s introduce: he’s the Austiner Rebbe, Rav Schmearson’s his name, son-inlaw of the Maggid of Rome, a cousin to the Butcher of Bakersfield, the Seer of Waco, the Gaon of South Central Texas. He holds a revolver in a glove said to be made from the hide of his parents, whom he’d sacrificed atop an extemporaneous altar, his sister, itself oblated upon the Polandland plains (which action had earned him his rep, such as it is): it swaddles so well that the hand beneath might as well be holy, Godguided. One of his own sons-inlaw, an iluy known as Tavarish, or the Light of Bukhara, follows to his side, a step behind. This squadron has its orders they’re just following’s the line they’re now leading (less directive than inspiration, makeshifty do: a line they’re butting and cutting, no respect for its delivery, no respect for its time), up up and winding up the stairs, death to mass on the landing, then wait. The Austiner Rebbe gloves a knock, that most ancient knock, wait for it, knock, knock, knock, a warning as presentation, appropriate, taken as given: this the oldest ritual of late middle night, that of respect tendered to death, the honor due anyone with a door so properly marked with mezuzah, be you prophet, profiteer, or innocent wretch. Inside the room, all seems suicided, spare of heart, stripped to rib…skeletonly tossed with what must follow flesh, a sullied strewing of plots: scuffed luggage, unlaundered clothes, stacks of cash; though humanly empty, it appears, and too much so: the emptiness of them alive more void than that of them in death, is the thought, with an ear hushed to the wood and a nose that’s fit for a key — the Rebbe’s, he’s patient, and stroked. A silence broken only by the treble of their tremble — too, it’s the clocktick, the rattle of the handle, it’s locked. To fit a finger, to try with the other hand, but it’s from the inside it’s locked, and no neysim are left us. The Rebbe takes a step back, gives his nod for the door’s slamming, to be rammed down a trample of Shalom and schlub manners: a not yet sacrificial Ovis aries is led up the stairs, its noisy leash of bare chain passing from mensch to mensch; it’s then muzzled in the right direction, thwacked on the tush with the butt of a gun…to scurry, to scamper: its testicles afling, its wool spattered in dreck then the glint of its horn and the door, it’s flattened down to the floor, hinges ripped from their frame in an explosion of air — they’ve been running the heatingbills way up, as if to prewarm what World’s to Come. A clouding, a balm. Their Rebbe dismisses the ram, kisses at the mezuzah remaining enjambed. He steps into the room, his boots trooping out over the wood, marking each step stiff with a whip of his crop to the thigh; making rigid starkdark paces across the worn planks, he then turns to hold up a hand to prevent his followers from doing what it is they do best, which is following: henchmenschs wait, as if ordered to disorder on the landing; they’re shuckling, jostling one another back and forth they’re whining what they think’s silent suggestion as their Rebbe heels out a chair, hardbacked, from the cedar desk unassuming, and sits down to face the bed barren, settling his crop across his chest as if in the burial of the Pharaoh he’s trying his damnedest here to impression.

Shalom, he says, finally, they’re meeting at last, hello Die, or should I say Keiner or Keyn Or, the Keeper, or whatever you want to be called…takes a schmeck tabak from a pocket’s pouch: it’s an honor to do this in person, I’ll tell you, hand to God, I have nothing but the utmost respect…he sneers deep from his drool, crosses his boots, then goes on: we didn’t want you to be a statistic, a number, a figure, not you, not like the good doctors Tweiss, Abuya, the Nachmachen, not like them. But one thing bothers me (and it’s not my rheumatism, though thank you for asking), if you’d be so kind as to enlighten me, I’d love to know how you people think. Why not accept destiny, that’s what I want to know, fate — why not Affiliate?

I know you’re there, you have to be, this is how it goes down…I had this dream, last night, or the night before last, what does it matter: there were seven beds for seven brothers, a hotel was burning and in the lobby there were cows servicing crows with the faces of inlaws, I think they were mine, that and a droughty famine in Sheboygan, or Oshkosh, or…I know how it all happens, don’t ask, I just don’t get why.

We admit, we had our suspicions…but we knew you weren’t yourself a firstborn once Passover passed. That proved it, sealed your goyishness with the New Year, and, as such, the gates. You’ve been trapped. Cornered. Put to bed. Nowhere left. He scratches at his breath of a beard, tugs payos, waits, takes his hat, all ten gallons of it from his head and leaves it on the desk to bare the yarmulke beneath, which is black and leather, expensive. I’ve been asked, nevermind by Whom, to attempt to save you one last time. You’ll have no further opportunities after this — are we understood…and he rubs the cap down over his skull, the kippah keppied between the eyes as a third eye, negativedark as if omniscient of everything wrong with the room: you’re here, you’re still alive, this I know…

He shpritzes tabakinate spit through his teeth to the floor, no matter, no one has to live here much longer…his mouth, a host of gold caps, dulled with black cud, whose essence is humming, Hatikvah — softly, it’s more for himself.

Enough already, there’s a voice from under the sag as if it’s the fisted talk of a last lost sock — and after all I did for that schmuck, that ingrate, B…

We don’t speak that name anymore, says the Rebbe, He’s not one of us. He’s the only.

I’ll be the first to admit it: we once were misled, a mistake, we relent and repent the required, the slichus and vidui by the minhag most recent, most true, but listen, it’s this…we realized it was our responsibility to further the nation, ours and none others’—not only to keep them, but to keep their memory, too, I mean burning…let’s speak honestly, though, the ninth commandment, I’m told: The millennium was upon us, the whole West was at stake, God was being debased, if not forgotten whether as He, She, It, or ideal, the entire world, you might remember, was going insane…and amid all this, you just can’t let a people like ours come to nothing, and only for power, only for profit — neither of you were to be trusted…

And now you want to destroy Him, the only inheritance left…Die rolls over to face his voice out into the room, hits his head on a spring unwound into nail, improvident, dull, gives a rusty gasp that knocks the frame’s knees, unsteadies the paws upon which everything rests, uneasily: God how He angers you, gets under your skin, on your nerves and not in your veins, no matter how much you suck, graft or grasp; anyway you slice it, I’m saying, He’s in the way, He’s too much the symbol, it pricks, how it hurts — the memory vex: His very existence, it reminds you of your own…

How could He have been an heir, He couldn’t be worthy — He was false, misleading, everything about Him was wrong…Him and not us. Fat glasses with a bad beard and uncultured, unculturable, I suspect, couldn’t get by, get along. Not great with people, do I have to remind?

Illegitimacy’s what I was saying, still is…He might’ve been what we made Him, though as that only half, a mixedmarriage.

What you made Him? bad blood — Shade backed you, then you went and abused privilege, public trust all for bubkiss.

What’s that we’re always told to say? I was only following orders? I was only following orders.

And so, what am I? Chopped liverish, chump?

What do you think I’m doing here, nu?

Hymn, I’ll tell you.

What I’m doing is waiting, patience now patient forever, we’re abiding while biding, call it a multitasked calling, dayeinu, genug. We await the Messiah, the true Moshiach the one and only, any day’s what I’m saying, soon, there’s been talk, soon enough, we’ve been assured, we’ve been blessed by assurance. Many believe His coming will be hastened by your, shall we say…

And if I Affiliate? and of all times he decides now to whisper.

The Rebbe rises, paces step step step over to sit down on the bed, gently, sagging onto the sprawl of his victim.

He asks, does it hurt?

The Rebbe tugs at the frayed fringe of the damask tester above — an overgrown treetop, a mourning mane grown by the dead.

Can I still? to ask a question of heels.

Convert? But you won’t — and neither will you Misters Mada, Gelt, and Hamm, I’ve told you already, I had a dream, all those angels bowing to a sunglassesed calf atop a neon ladder, with its tail a profusion of greenglitter sheaves…gevalt, you should know the procedure by now, how word gets around like a war: we accept only those whose intentions are pure; it’s a doxo-logical paradox: that I had to offer this salvation already nullifies its acceptance…you with me? Given the circumstances, how could I ever regard any atonement as sincere? I’ve got a reputation to protect. Mine, the religion’s, the race’s. Though God, Hashem, might prove better receptive; for your sake, I hope so; good luck, let me know.

As far as it’s been revealed to me (through these dreams, orders, protocol, the unappealable tie of the hands with a thread of red tape securing the strips of the Law, its mummifying parchment to gag, blindfold then Babel the ears), you’ve been found guilty of propagating a heresy, and your fate in this world, as we can only pray it’ll be in the next, is nothing — or hell, if we so believe in it; I haven’t had that dream yet…we’re still unsure.

What will you do to Him…that is, if you ever find Him — and I can be of help: I have contacts, I know people from Poles, am contractually owed, I’ll prove myself essential again, I promise, I swear, oath and affirm on my life…thrashing against the mattress above.

In light of the pain that will be His, yours will be as a pleasure…and the Rebbe rises to allow the goy his last wind, goes to the window, opens it to the alley below. He lips a wad of tabak out into sky, which is wetting with night, slicking cobbles: another day’s winter, dying like snow by the millions.

He’s only one mensch, you’ll never…

Never Schmever’s the tsk, it’ll be easier than you think: the idea’s to seek out anyone different — divine intervention, surrender, I mean…His face is known, as are His habits; it’s miraculous, a matter of fate; it’s mystical, you of all people should understand — if you intend to die peacefully, you’ll have to…

He’s why we’ve returned here to this abominable Witz. He led us here, lonely for destiny…resolution; please, it’s all too obvious not to have been preordained, prophesized already done…hesitation — we have our top menschs on it; it’s not my department.

You came here to save Him for life, and I came here to save you from Him. You have no claim, you have no blood — that is, not after I spill it…and the Austiner Rebbe points a silvery yad at a young, faired mensch who sallies a little too excitable one step over the threshold then into the room he’s already shooting, hitting Hamm through the drapes, staining two to the head, as Mada smashes out of the wardrobe and shouting, a pistol in his hand screaming its rounds, he’s shot dead a step before the Rebbe, to fall at the hem of his uniformed underworn kittel, floored with a thud to writhe, then stiffen; another mensch, this one a pure whitehead with pupils the stings of waylaid wasps, he’s filling in for his friend who he’s not hit mortally only knocked over with a great wind rung at his vest, which has been proofed as if to save him from even the collision of his soul with bad faith — he opens up on the steamertrunk, holes it and Gelt inside and all over, with such a force that the trunk falls over, and with it the lid wounded open with an overflow gush; two additional menschs (who are they, who are any of them, they all look the same, what I’m saying is — who can tell, make up the difference), they do a number of recommended stretching exercises, kneebends, deepdipping, and knucklecracks — consult the manual then your doctor your father before undertaking’s disclaimed — then hand and knee it down to the floor, to drag Die out by the armpits, pinch him up squirming to hold him a shiver at window, in blown snow, an ultimate beam of ultimate sunset, thunder lama lo and with lightning, too, this grossganze Apocalypse shtick…no tragedy this going all out, last rites with all the death-trappings, an honor (for once, the accounts agree, the weather’s never been so benevolent to circumstance — which means either that the divine might approve, or It mightn’t); ices pour in, mount in drafts, swirls, and sinuous whirls; blanking a pile of hotel stationary from atop the desk, as if to sop with its whiteness the bleeding below; have you ever felt such a kaltmachen draft? rattling the Rebbe’s vacated chair. Die restrained, he’s trussed with hands, hogtied with tongues, a snarl of languages ordering him in tones heated, and as angry as fast, to calm down, be a mensch about it, keep still: unable to even reach into his tush, and so disallowed the mercy of a mortuarial stache, knuckled out to pall away nerves with its schmear. The Rebbe unsheathes a chalaf from a scabbard hung on his gartel, approaches, with the blade held out, its crescent aloft. Long on sharp and without serration, an undisturbed stretch of steel, without blemish: he holds this knife to the face of his victim, reflects; lights dusk into their eyes, the burn of disbelieved skies.

Examine it for imperfections, and if we had all of eternity still you’d find none…

But, of course, many hold that the holiness of the sacrifice has nothing to do with its how or intention, technique — that it depends entirely upon the holiness, or the purity, oy, of the sacrificed soul: an inner kashrut, makes you think…though if you follow that interpretation, there’s nothing I can do — except slaughter you according to the Law, it’s a mitzvah: giving you at least one blessing on the curse that is your life, that has been, Shalom. It’s a beginning, think of it as, all over again: call it a circumcision of your head. One slice, just a slice, and it’ll be over — quick, and unangeled…the Rebbe’s son-inlaw approaches, holds Die’s head back by a stray tuft of gray greasily sprouted at the back of his neck from between the fats of his bald, a reverse turkey gullet, this warblingly negative jarble at nape, shakily fearful, imperfect as animalistically ugly — exposing the voice of the front…the core of the goy’s humanhalf, his Adam’s apple whose pluck would leave the rest of him bleak: a fruit that’s halved, too, from the sin of its knowledge offyellowed, straining to speak through its wrinkled, thin peel.

Holding the chalaf high, the Rebbe now, without hesitation, slits down, silently fast — and from blameless steel, the stream of a fountain, a gush of blood wandered with the tread of his boots toward the doorway then through it, life heeled, stepped into stain…a heavythick spurt of ice from outside, the latest sky shot through with stars, freezing on their ways down sodden, and smashing: the flow of the artery Most High severed upon the horizon’s own sharpness, it soaks through the air, its purity pouring to empty the other edge of the night: our vessel lacking a single shard and so leaking through such darkness, light…then, there’s a last clasp of thunder from lightning’s strike at the breast — the Rebbe turns on his heel as Die, limp, falls with the sun.

And the moon with Shabbos now rises.

Me, I’m still being me…I don’t have much of a choice, stuck out of the one window of the one remaining wall of a house destroyed atop a mountain, I am. Eheyeh. It’s been many hopes, this structure fallen, mostly ruined save its last windowed wall just last moon, had incarnated the dreams of untold — it’s as if their last dream’s this whitewall itself, with them willing it, from their furthest sleeps, to maintain a last stand against memory’s lapse, and so to maintain my sentinel: from most recently to its oldest origin, it’d been quartering for Affiliated Forces, then before that a warehouse, before that a stable, just prior a priory church, an orthodox chapel, then a synagogue, a shul, even earlier the home of a family of let’s say peasants, what to do: home of the husband’s parents, home of the parents’ parents, the parents’ parents’ parents’ home, I forget how far forever — their hallways dug out, leading deep into the watery past, twisted passages seeking hospitable wine and the dregs of firm rooting, the native soil of a creation story, an origin myth making much of a Garden’s two trees with their multanimous branchings of telling and told…giving way to the rooms of my others, passing into homes of their own: their own earthgraves, dwelt amidst wells only a little leap further — there at my echo’s other foot, this overlook’s opposite slope.

Enough to say, this had been the house of my ancestors, the ancestral home of my mother’s side, Ima’s, Hanna her name was; though essentially peasants, they were once the richest in this village below, or this town, from which they’d impoverished themselves enough to emigrate from, to immigrate to — and thank God for that…enough to say, this might’ve been my own home, too, think of that, only if.

Their home, it’d actually been a guardhouse, given to them in return for their work, which had been guarding, without fences or gate: these families, mine, had been Messiahkeeps, were kept always on the lookout for the Moshiach, imminent the Redeemer in Whom we believe though as we’re always so quick to say though He tarry—and so theirs was perpetual work, perpetualizing, and yet amply provided for, with a chicken every Friday and fresh milk twice a week, courtesy of those whose salvations they were ensuring, just a fall or shofar’s call down the slope: saviorseekers they were and that’s why, it’s thought, the dwell and its wall had been left atop the hill above the round valley and its settlement squared down below; maybe spared through displaced superstition, as if to destroy the thing would be to destroy future hope, and then again, perhaps it’s survived only out of a moment’s respect, or from symbol: never know when its vantage might come in handy again…O the handcup, the jubilant summons: they were supposed to wait there until the resurrection of the dead, then muster the living with primitive hoots and alarms. Disturb their mundane’s what, interrupt diaspora for an ingathering to where, they weren’t sure: how the people once here and now dead, they only engaged and supported such watchwards because the town, or the village, was located so far away from everywhere else that they were afraid the Messiah would miss them, or that they might miss Him in His coming, and so their stand and the conflict, again, as to where exactly to paradise to — whether the market city, or Jerusalem, if it’s the capital — once the day would dawn of their reckoning, if. And nu, how it was only my relatives among them who’d hoped that that light would never arise, what with the poultry, the butter churningup the holiday tips, free aliyahs and kavod galore — not the only people, though, for whom exile workedout, meant success…not the only people who’d hoped against Eden in their fortress defense of a livelihood, the health and happiness of their kinder — before relocating to America thinking they’d made it, done with all that custom and boredom, only to hope there anew and this time around with a longing that’s greater than ever: hymn, waiting on the corner for Mammon to show, streetside peddling their apples and patience.

As for me, I was hoping the window led out…mystically, hoping above the above, upstairs-upstairs-Upstairs, but no: it’s new town, old evil; new village, only the newest of ruins…eastern form razed razed razed to its very foundation; inhabitants unable to be raised despite the hurt of my howling, whether they’re in hiding or dead, hiding in death, who’s to ask. Skeletally stripped, rippedopen staircases spiraling turretwork, tower’s marrow…what’s a spire and what’s a smokestack, what’s a building or was and what’s grave or a tomb; from this vantage, resembles a cemetery. I lean, I’m leaning, to search, to find, to root amid roots, to moon amidst the maternal…deeply, too far. Finally — painfully, I birth myself from out of the window, tumbling to snow, then down the flank of the mountain, which flows into this plot’s main and only prospekt, when I have none to speak of, and that as no speech. Though even if talk I had in me how, there’d still be no words for where: bombedout, clearedout and out destroyed, then salted with ice so that nothing would grow again, ever. Fallow without jubilee. I fall from the summit of the hill behind me on down to egg the nest of its valley: as if a wedding’s lost band its circumferential containment, the ring of its bind, my mother’s and tarnished…toward its Square down its slope I’m hurtling steeply through the Square proper, which is unpaved, packed earth — only to land slammed against the pediment of a spire forlorn, a towering topple…its Plague Column, I think, what’s called a Pestsäule: a bestially marbleized swirl.

Not quite (which was Aba), have patience as Ima herself would’ve said and I’ll tell you: it’s a schlong…you know of what I’m talking, she’d say, it’s a putz, that’s what, the kind that crawls down below…without legs, to forever beg on its belly for affectionate time — it’s flaccid now and so distended from its plinth, hanging stubbily shrunken atop the dust as if lazily asleep, unaroused. A clotting of vein and frozen gray uncircumcised fleshiness, I’m looking it straight in its eye, without sense. I get myself up and stand a little, then long; entranced, waiting to expect what, I don’t know.

From sunrise on the next morning, which is the Shabbos, the holiest day of the cycle against which this dial’s intermediary shadow has been erected opposed, it begins to fill itself up, to pump stiffly with life as if sucked from below: taller and thicker it grows, its foreskin retracting, until an hour or so before the highest pitch of the day, and there as if dinged struck, stricken at the headhuge clap of the sun, ringing out the sky’s call to account, everyone rise — it’s up fully, and fat and hot, too, melting the weather from around the platform upon which it’s risen, a puddle, a pool…pulsing immaculately in the midst of the Square, and then above the village, the town — expanding hillhigh, extending mountainously and yet soon, as presently noon, casting no shade to speak of: pinkening then fully red and rashy as if alarmed angrily, made mad, and heftily hard, too, with the undiminished course of blood urged up from the earth — life spilled being absorbed again and again into time, and its telling.

At this twelve with its ring donging above from the bell of a church…it explodes into seed, in all pulpy seeds — which hit the rounding, impotent sun, in a great spot of stain…sticking only to drip off that orb as latterday fug — throughout the afternoon dropping away in failed viscous globs.

As nearing sunset again, what’s to expect…it’s gone flaccid again, snakes around itself as if to sleep away a next dark, fenced in and gated safe by its wild pubes sticky and hard at the foot: these wickety weeds I’m stepping on, these slatted stalks I’m stepping around…to smite one off and step on with a staff.

That evening, to ascend the mountain next into night, trailing behind me what still call me by motherly things, they give me no rest was what she’d always say…left dirtied pots and pans over my shoes, I’m stepping mixingbowls halved, dragging threadpulls, unravelings, broombristles and mop-heads and feathers from dusters, knipls and kvitls a tittle yidl zidl yi di di yi di di, clanging and tangling up to the summit one over, upon which I behold another valley below. Here, too, villaged with yet another town, the last of them this last Shabbos, I hope: my father’s town, Aba’s, I’m sure of it, from whence my father’s family had fled or once left, who knew…I do, only now. A town Unaffiliated, maybe, with my mother’s, though it’s been forever a neighbor; or, perhaps unaffiliated in any other, lesser, sense of that slur: that of its rare tidiness, its neatness it’s almost shocking; its relative order as compared to the waste of the barren maternalized just over the hill, down the mound. Never been sacked is what, or not much — at least not as retribution for the imageless worship of a God without son, or in retaliation for the grace of a minority ethic. Unlike by my mother’s, there have never been any pogroms here, nor ghettowide pillage — no prunestewed, beerbothered, sausagestumped rape. From here, my father’s it’s so clean, so beautifully perfect: everything in its proper place, at its proper time, yet abandoned…a clock stilled but still secure in the promise of tick, safe in its jewelcase, the glassy sky clearer, and bright (if only you knew how to wind, wheel its dial the horizon around) — a relic that is its own reliquary’s more like it, as it’s both the object holied and its holying set.

At the summit, I stumble…panting, I trip to fall over this well, halfopened, exposed — in my shock stubbing its lid off to scatter round down the scarp of the next prospekt promised, which is only the manicured furtherance of the previous mud. It flies wildly — skidding its way toward the purity of the village that once iced patrimony, home to the goyim who’d melt down to my father: a townspeople of immaculate surface, a townsfolk cold and of glaciate calm, whose regularity and slowness seem only quaint to me now — though if every once in a century they’d be mannered faster and louder toward strangers surrounding, and even angry, at times, furious and violent, abusive…still, the worst they could ever be accused of within their own world would be the reticent, the reserved, the brutally civil: pleasantries toward one another by which to service every occasion, fathering each other with specific forms of formal address. Du, tu, to you, too — I shouldn’t expect the same from myself, halved between valley and vowel. Abandoned alone to my shriek, an echo of the throb of my toe through the straw and a loafer. To curse out of spite that quiet sleepy town down below me — to curse its Church and its steeples, its cross high above as if the tongue of the sky’s bell stilled silent at compline — and that with a mouth lamed by that very Imagelessness all of us bless whether as Father, or God…the gummy gape of the Square, wideopen, welltended, soulless. As if a crumb to poison the churchmice, a collectionplate coined even smaller, or distant — the grating puckish and spun, as if a lid without eye, the knee’s patch of a skullcap, it hits, at long last, to a skittering stop against the westerly wall of this village Town Hall, denting a mark on that venerable frontage, which is as impassive as the ice is gray and yet, now imperfect.

I stand at the rim, the lip of the pit…what, you think I’d only recognize a well I fall into?

Inside, there’s a nipple…just deal, get used to it, will you: after all, this is the very end of the tip, hard up from the puffy. Down there it’s halfburied, not so deep I can’t reach. A giver of life this earthbound nipple, as if the whole world’s a tit and this, its summating jut — springing forth with gainful fluid. A pap that after I go to take hold, it grows, to poke high out from its setting. This, then, a sacred sucklingplace. I fall myself to the ice that surrounds. A nipple of nipples, The Nipple of, an impossibility made mythic, the mythical made possible, pasteurized or homogenized down, skim a percent then decide whether bile or curd…it’s handhard, fistswollen as it seeks at my mouth: all flesh and fiery areole that rises to rim, as a lip at my lips, its tip distended to glory my pucker. I’m thirsty, hungry for edge, even a lick, would settle for swiping…prostrate, initiatory of suckle. I swaddle my beard around its overcast red, Adam’s red, Edom’s red, the unnaturally bloodcoursed, applerashed…having a difficult time because I’m sucking, or trying, and nothing, I’m losing my breath. My mouth stabbed by a phantom. I stroke the whole length, then, attempting to milk the flabelliform thing with hands filthy and rough — in a satisfaction unwashed, and unblessed, this resurrection of the breast of every mothering woman: my sisters’, Ima’s and her mother’s, her mothers’ Imas’ yadda and blah bladdering forever around and around this hefty sphere, this sustenant orb…

What milk it gives is intermittent, initially, comes stuttering spurty, comes darkly soured, but with gum and gulp begins to flow whitish, then wholesome to nourish, what could be better — lo so it smacks to my tastelessness, though, going only on the quality of the swallow: at first flecked with pebbles, shot through with gritgravel, then lukewarm this nectar, an alb ambrosially smooth; I guess what I’m saying is, yum. I pinch the nipple, flick it and flex, lying flat on my stomach to flail my shoes down the hill. A crop of boulders surround, a ringing that might only be pimples as if this nipple’s goosed flesh, horripilation of sorts, but it’s not — they’re stray ordnance, gyres of shrapnel and frag weathered idolatrously into the forms of stray heads without feature: the senseless halo of my sink.

The milk begins to redden me rosy, it honeys, it makes me, remade. Remember your pity as the lowerlip of indulgence, from my mother I only knew of such suck for a week. I feast, dribble lust from my lips, smack and stump, suckling beyond my fill or any, to bulging, to bust…and so intently that I don’t register the slight welling, an intolerance flaringup in pricked, pinching swells, lactose, lactarded pains, not yet worrying me, though they should, so fitfully nervous soon shaking my tract. Warning of hurt, of bloating, and cramps, of gaseousness but it’s more, it’s larger than that and any ignominious lack of an enzyme. It’s that the symptoms themselves surge, egoistically huge. Limbs marbled. Until it’s milk and milk only that’s the flow through my veins, the stuff by which bones are made strong for the strain. Within this strange cradle I feel like the only babe upon earth, slurping at final immeasurable squirts until the nipple gives guzzle no longer. One last spurt, then a drizzle absorbed into the skin I’ve been warming — with beard, with handstroke, my face brought close to snuggle, to cuddle with breath…the last drop dripping to the rim of the ice, and freezing there, as a harder, barer, crueler whiteness — lavan, lavana. With the world entire beneath me, below, left deflated, a teat sucked wrinkled and dry, this mammary spent, crumpled thanks craven, hollowedout, as if for the discard.

Holding my gut I go down again, weighted to fall and enlarging with every knocked tumble, rotationally increased in this revolting around…until I smack, at the wall of the Town Hall of this nowhere that once birthed my Aba, or would have — brought to a stop, then further dispersion, as I gather myself out from a puff of lacteal snow. Each flake is a number, a tock’s mark, a dendrite’s tooth, the fang of a frozen petal. A weather of myself, of my own making, a sprinkling of cloud rounded above into the clock of the Hall, which holds as if prismimprisoned the face of a different sister of mine every hour — not on the hour but slipping, this slide sororal, a slow tinting change of their lights, of their darks, the bows of their eyes at the zeroes…and it’s then that I realize I’m lulled overheated, feverishly stuffed, not just that but perhaps even poisoned, shvitzing with a pain in the belly and I’m breathing too heavy like I’m snoring awake. Lightheaded, airy. With each flappy uvular heave, as if the attempted swallow of a little white grape refusing to make its way down…I’m growing, it feels, as if in the lunarly regulated shed and regrowth of the dial’s hand I’d kept swept and zipped tight within the skirts of my mother, but more so, all over. My stomach, my poor poor stomach as Ima would’ve said, heaves up a groan, as my breasts like hers, too, they’re stretching, like the striated hairs she might bleach as they stray toward a splotch, the purple and black how we’d match…I’m inflationary, pumping to pop, the ribroped, hipcinched robe of my body now rising, now risen, expanding, while encompassing air — O sweet vinestirred milk, seething to mother my blood…render me unto the care that was hers!

In the beginning I’m filling the Square, the dusky paths in, the pass out…the parts nighted unknown to the high other senses lost in my purge, in my paunching, me smeared wetgreased into doorways to mark them with my greed: fillingout this village’s loose waist of houses and pens, of barns and threshedover clearings, to fill the circling town then the valley it’s breasted within, and the next, down into the valley before that, a womb bearing beyond. Then atop this enormity, too, outerlimits it’s feeling like now, my head floating upward into the void stratospheric, the darkness invisible and so, indivisible there, with all the other nightly ordinance that might float obscured in the light of the moon, and then even the moon itself with all of its seasons and cycles to clock, to gather into orbit — around me; pushed, pulled, and then held, steadied, then moved around and around, spun by my force, the tidal grip and grope of my flesh. Attraction’s what I’m talking, a refusal to give up, let go. No, not a satellite or planetary, I’m bigger than that, I’m a star, for real this time as my sisters would’ve said and been jealously awed — finally, the firmament taking a shine; me holding worlds together, aloft, setting them to motion about the poles of my horns. A body, and what a body! celestial; its catasterism total, destructive — the Milky Way purged from my gut with the flick of a cometlike tail, the boilingpoint of my burning intestine…a Meaty Way horizoning at the other extremity, toward my tush a blackhole into which all time must fall, a God’s malpracticed, mistaken navel. Around my scars and around my marks and my wens, my sores and my pimples: this gathering of constellations, of galaxy, universe; it feels as if the whole cosmos, which is perfect in idea only, if only within me: wholeheaded, requiring no twohanded repair — as if it’s about to burst forth and bang, to explode in dim peals flaking my meat to the milkslippery, milkwhite stones both hewn and geologies found, formed below the steeples of the Church, beneath the spire of the Town Hall’s meridian, amid this Square’s void cleaving a valley past the womb and breast of my mother whose husband converted and so, my father was damned. And, as if in belated revenge or his belfry redemption, I’m borne above the throng of those he’d forsaken, these statues blinded, the deaf and mute rock, the crushed gut of this bridge, that vomitus river, itself a flow stormily swollen…God no better than them, still I’m bursting with greatness, milked as His highness so huge above all, so taken with myself — how I’m ascending unto the Uppermost, if you know it, you should…

Atop the Church of my father’s town — whose worship might have denominated his own had he stayed to be born unconverted, baptized in the worn lap of a spouting gargoyle idol — there’s a crucifix, a cross holy and sacred, and yet so much smaller than the halfmooned, bit crescent nail of my forefinger: a mere crux ordinaria as it’s called Latinwise, as if it’s a species of sentient life, and so cycled mundanely as both predatory and prey — one of the stilled and yet fearsome, toothy mutant dominion perched to threaten, and yet precariously, on its claws at a cornice; this figure promoted supernaturally through the ranks of the demons, risen to lord it above its more featured fellows invested with lesser symbol and wings to top the highest reach of this Cathedral, let’s say it is, there atop the tallest of the innominate, decardinaled steeples as if a rood rod installed to conduct any wrath that might call. Here I’m pregnant with milk in white air, with this cross burying itself into the eye of my navel, gouging spinedeep, its crossed arm barring me, nailing itself into me as if forbidding, in an intervention nothing short of superfluous, and divinely dismaying: refusing me a world I’ve already forsaken — a father’s domain to which I don’t dare tempt return, even prodigally, even if Heavenly proven, made then remade…I belch a brilliant millions of stars, and then — hisssssss…it’s my voice you’re hearing on the wind, of the wind, exploded to weather, to pieces of pieces, my immensity popped, scattering shards; usurpers to shove their ways through my tatters, remains, these patches, those righteous splinters of flesh and boneslivers, badges of me, and rainbows’bands, remnants never to be put back together, never to be revesseled, spitstuck, or tikkuned with whose love, tell me how on a gust — never to be assimilated again into any becoming anew, another In the beginning again, yet another arrival for seating whether at table, in pew…perfection’s hope lost to a lateness, a gap yawning lag, a void purely defiled, immaculate as immaculately unclean, and so, never to heal: the wound wound between clockhands — below, and clasped still — which distance maintained is all that sustains.

As shards of me fall from the sky as if shards of the sky — this weathering of me through the world.

All that remains of me are two horns, here in a Square, having lately grown from my head, then shed, scattered atop the earth, tipped and tumbled, and blown through by wind — Hear O Israelien, the hollowness of their howl…

Mere artifacts, for the museum we know as the future.

One day last, or so it’s been said, they’ll be found, on which end they’ll be sounded with lip and with lung: their blast to bloom up from the fundament, through a cadence toned to the heavens, reflectively pitched low to the grave…an opening, this cadence existing only between pitches, within them, this the moment of every conversion, the last — when air becomes sound, the assimilation of breath into call…a life, mouthforced into summons: a perfect interval, this high note rising ever further to kiss at the face of the void, resolving into a horizon on which the world will rest its revolutions, soon, in our time. And listen — this will be the death of both silence and Babel, of question and answer, all reborn as a freeing of air.

At the outskirts of my father’s dwellingplace, at the furthest limit of His encampment, there amid the ringing of haycocks where land gives way to earth, to pure planet — there’s an emptied barrack or prison thatch that once quartered killers of mine and of any other kind, too, murderers with governments and the sanction of uniform, weapon, and horse. It’s since become all board, nail, leak, and draft, its floor strewn with straw and that and its walls smeared with the sickening reek of wet hair, pelage, daily turd. Inside, inhabiting, there’s only a lone aged ram. It’s humiliated, made modest, as its burden’s considerable: how it’s dually imaged, as if once for each horn, for each half of the cadence responsible; this ram both existing of its kind, as the last of its species still grazing, and then existing for its kind, too, as their most imperfected survivor — most imperfected as their survivor, their last and their only; to be herded humbled, alone, as a herd of one and itself, up the ramp of an Ark, bound express for our covenant’s end: think the species’ lowliest, and most degenerate aspect, made ancient to wizened bellwether with raggedy coat, then hefted here to rume out its life once it’s downed its last golden door; it’s lost its horns, too…how they’d been stolen by night, by a boy and his father, and an angel that’d saved them both from a mountaintop altar. At the sound of my horns, my own shofars these shofarot twinned in the wind, one for each lip ended upon that lip of last day…how this ram despite wormy illness and old age will perk, turn itself dumbly, lean its head toward the gusting, an echo. Hoof mud. Now, charging its brutishly bared head, and with nothing to fear, forward and always, this ram will hurl itself against the furthest wall of the barrack, not east nor west but out, only out and with such fierce and wet woolen force — to knock everything down, to shatter it through, an escape, into unlimited space.

A new world.

One day, one night soon, in our time — we await.

The Museum of Museums

A lone long, thin reflecting pool as if a finger accusing in the image of which you only encounter yourself and your failings, though placid, usually — if not for the drizzle slowly descending; an eruptive fountain beyond, its hot, vitreous bubbling burbling the surface of the pool into which it flows sharded freeze, liquid glass smashed over, again, reflecting in sharp tawdry lights the limousines and taxicabs lately arriving, depositing, departing, dropoff; this melt of miniature ice floes, too, sounding like the joyous tears of attractive, in shape, wellinsured widows, loudly through the overprivileged, entitledly adolescent whine of the sirens: police escorts driving into skids, then straightening out again at the curb of the narrow redcarpet unfurled, soaked then shod dirtied halfway to black…at least the snow’s stopped, for now, heavy weather relented, RSVP’d regrets only, leaving us all with only the belated consolation of spring, its droolingly lazy rain not doing the least to distract Security’s athletic attention: strong menschs blondish and big, earpieced, vested and armed, crowded in a circle at the helipad up on the roof, readying the site for its arrivals due in from behind the clouds, any moment; snipers with scaleless eyes and snakeskin gloves hold down their rooftop positions; every available soldier’s either plainclothed on the ground or inside and dressuniformed, stationed Uptown east, to secure the Museum for tonight’s homecoming gala. A flow of fluttery dresses, the funereal austerity of blueblack tuxedos…who’s the corpse, he’s my husband, you have my condolences: notoriously bowtied bodies, they emerge from rare leathers to the fire of bulbs, a crowd mouthed mad for a glimpse or a grope. Menschs hold umbrellas for these guests, for the distance between door and carpet kept dry, then up the stairs, the landing, the stairs again and then in through the doors, into the specially decorated lobby: the thought that maybe they’ve got weather there, too, interiorly, those dim monstrous skies of galleries and halls leading to galleries further, with their own weather coming down from the ceilings, cathedrally vaulted, the swirling atmospheres of high domes.

A Museum, whisper insidevoices — a question, is there anything more indicative of the decline of the universe than a Museum, you think? too many reporters here tonight, watch your words, mind your mouth — though the universe, that’s a Museum itself, a Museum unto itself, isn’t it, wasn’t it? Questions, too many unanswered…is there anything more horrendously depressing, I’m asking? Who’s awake who would know? A Museum isn’t the end of the world, no, it’s the world itself ending, dying, happening as we speak, here and now — the as slow then only more terrifying murder of everything; the lightblind casechoke, display’s duststrangle, the peccant poison known as culture — which itself ’s only to be preserved, to sterility, never to engender again.

And then there’s nothing more repugnant than a fundraiser for a Museum, especially if it’s a formal night like tonight, a tails with a tie and an evening-dress everything down to the pearls affair, out with the jewelrybox, out of the safedeposit box, then the bowtie you tie by hand not the clipon, God forbid, how there’s nothing optional, never is. Mothballs roll their ways down the slick marble stairs, bouncy chuckles, they tripup the salaried slaves in attendance. Take pity, this is the first night they’ve dressed up in a while, have permitted themselves the luxury of…to become the lover of their own sin, an embrace black and cuffed, its enjoyment — how to explain it? please, provide us their thinking. How lately, they’ve reached this permanent stasis, nunc stans and all that, the fat reunited with his brother happy again, in the middle of the metropolitan desert — the goy showing up bearing gifts in the form of simple household solutions, such as variously blinking and beeping organizational helpers, it’s said. Call it another Enlightenment, call it a selfemancipation, a realization, an actualization — call it what you will, you’re already late.

Aleph is for the Alist unfurling up the stairs, each entried step a dark scrawl of angular socialites and their squat, loopy machers being checked off by the door…reformed representations of oldtime Division Street fabricants here with their brotherly cousins, a host of warehouse winners grew up in Midwood now officed in the Army Terminal, Brooklyn, sitting on a pile of home furnishings both used and likenew, the repentant scion of Bowery pushcart poets and their whorish, redheaded Pomeranian landladies I’m talking sixfloor walkup ugly, with socialist leanings escorted by their daughters become correctly cold Yorkville obgyns, explain that — their own daughters, married into the Battery’s recharged investment bankers, corporate moguls in from a Siburbia beyond Connecticut and with kinder of their own lately heiresses doing the dos, jetting the charity circuit, balancing balls — selfmade menschs in every racket and trade that can be legally listed, so far I’ve written over five grand in new business and I don’t even read, can’t even spell; them and the women who made them, they slowly slacken their pace to meet the press just assembled in a row on both sides up the stairs, always upward, Uppermost and then what, you expect a brass ring, take your coat…journalists pent behind cordons like pedigreed livestock who talk, who ask too many questions, too many of the wrong ones, at least, squawky without answer: who are you, who do you think you aren’t…they’ve come in hordes, to barren the buffet, to drink the fountains dry and then the mooned pool, skinnydip, eclipsing in their spectacle what’s hung high from lunettes — entering under a raft of tautblown, entablatured banners proclaiming an exhibition, an eternal exhibition, it’s said, of the way it was, sentiment, nostalgia, Ostalgie if you must from that language itself an exhibit (besides which, we’re kitsched in the East after all—82nd & Fifth), a Museum of an Extinct Race, of a not quite Unconditional Surrender…gevalt, it’s okay, only richtig, go ahead and admit it, of their old lives just skinshed in this very pilgrimage Uptown, up from the overhauled system, the redone 6 Train if they’ll take it, anything green…or trekked on over from the West Side across the darkling Park upon the wings of the crosstown bus, M86 be its name blessed forever and ever — pulled up in their commissions and liveries, not as guests anymore but as hosts, not as visitors of late but at home, masters of ceremony and the attention attendant, making their last adjustments after stepping to sidewalk’s sopping carpet, a remnant of a God’s tongue gotten for a good price right off the floor, off the rack (one woman mortified at how her husband’s schlock satin pants they have too many pleats and break only down by the heel, that and his shirt it’s pleated, too, or maybe just wrinkled, showing a full two inches of cuff, is how crazy, how far we’ve come), them tugging, pinching pulling, a flush wind, hair askew, blown big and unstyled, these gusts of dress exposing scandal, toupees with their yarmulkes still pinned go flying like demons through air. A sweep of light stains the night, swirling carbon arc searches…all turn their heads to the judgment descending, a buzz, a whirr, the noise of skykashering knives: Shade lands on the roof ’s helipad; nothing can begin without him, he’s a sponsor of the evening, the guest of honor and the honored host both, as reelected Head of the Sanhedrin, turned out for the occasion in a slimmingly fitted white tux, frilly lapels baby blue, a matching blue & white kippah atop, alternating colors seamed to its quadrants; it’s trimmed so heavily in platitudinal platinum, it’s amazing he can still keep his head high.

Are we expected to justify — tell me, to whom? They’re here because B’s tongue’s finally finished licking its rounds, has only just returned to the city, to be unveiled tonight and enshrined, on permanent exhibition and in its original, restored reliquary of I promise, it’s gold, housed under a lone spotlight, in a furthest gallery yet to be opened…beyond the doors, which are huge, castiron monstrosities, like mouths, as if the breasts to a giant’s coat, Gog, Magog, Goliath, the noted developer Barry Silberfels depicted towering over his wife nèe Phyllis Stein and their twin kinder Stephen and Steven — the doors, stylized with carvings, imaged commandments, their symbolism obscure only to the blind or the braindead, don’t do this, do do this, Thou shalts and not and please, just don’t ask: in a wild wind they’re flung open to the street, the collection aired to the darkness, the stairs that lead up then into the marbling heart, to the flight of guests arriving at yet another destination never their final — ascension, verticality, that’s called mobility, babe; past the staircase’s landing, halving the flights, guarded by two templar lions chained tightly to rails, their paws splayed without claw, they’re rolling twinned globes, being ridden by agents, barebacked undercover as angels twirling swords on temporary fire…past them, fleeing from the flash and the ask, they’re still pouring in: curators and docents and amateur experts, the critics with their papers and pens in their defamation suits, slurry ties, arm-in-arm money-lenders with their lent, philanthropists two-by-two, alongside their beneficiaries even betterdressed, beaming, these schemers and scammers charitably deducting their rentals tonight; more guests billed as either surprise or special or both, personalities you might know from, remember or recognize, roast and toastmasters extraordinaire — this place, it must be making a fortune; they’ll museum the world three times over with what they’re taking in: fivethousand shekels per plate’s being charged, endowments gathering interest forever, sponsorship’s accumulative assurance ad æterna, the Paradise that is the Curator’s Circle, the Purgatory of Sustaining Membership slander, whatever you want to be, we’ll go ahead and give it a name; amazing, tomorrow they’ll be turning donors away. Menschs flood the lobby, make coatcheck, strip rubbers, lose umbrellas then locust the cashbar, ordering vodka with Jaffa OJ for their wives headed straight to the restrooms to face fresheningup: primp and preen with powder the puffs of their noses, redlabel mashke with Coke (O/U, by now even K’s good enough) for themselves. Free Palestein! with every large cup of coffee! A Mazel Tov orgy, boutonnières poking bosoms, the glint and stick of starredflag lapelpins, handshakes, onehanded, twohanded, hugs turning to kiss one for each cheek, two for them both then the lips; let me admire you twirls, looking the new wife or girlfriend onceover, up and down, check the gums, turn around now, bend at the waist; some are talking standing talking then moving to mingle, sidestep network, drop and hint, while others’ve already taken their placecarded seats at tables placed around the periphery then further in toward the stumbleworn inner stairs; their hands in their laps they’re waiting for what, some sort of honorable mention, another award, a keynote unlocking, the idea, justification, the reason, excuse: save it for later; first’s the gala, then the appeal; they riffle their programs — and only then, the unveiling…the Tongue.

A moment, please. In this whole huge horrible marble world in which love might be lost but its clay still remains — are there any exhibits, any objects, anything at all I’m talking save the Tongue…in this entire terrible world of stone, upon this lonesome rock thirdsunned, are there, where are they then, the artifacts, I mean, the pictures hung on the wall…statues to walk around and around again and around, following their flaws: a horror, monstrous it’s a profile all the way around; there’s no substance, it’s terrible, there’s no real…all those vast empty spanses expected and then, meaning: Rape of the Deserving by Apollo, of Europa, taken for granted by Dionysus, among others, Der Blaue Reiter heading east over Die Brücke, anything else for the chiaroscurious, maybe Selfportraits of Madonna & Child, one by him one by her how they’re hung as a diptych, side by pierced side…sacra conversazione set in shepherd’s green pasture against mountainside alla prima, what about The Circumcision of Christ, Three Kings veiled impasto, lives of the saints in infinitriptych, altarpieces in which each panel of three folds into three, those three then folding into threes of their own and then, tripling infinitely within a frozen forever, Last Supper Last Judgment natura morta, a likeness of St. Olympias done in the school of Rembrandt’s sfumato, a saint orphaned, too, who she died rich in exile in Nicodemia, and whose Roman feast day’s the day of the night of His birth, that of St. John of Martha, then, or of St. Florian, whoever how it doesn’t much matter, they’re all dead anyway and yet remembered, too, with that same gild hanging over their heads, framed with holiness, touch them, you’ll wither — any graven images is what I’m asking? No, only the Tongue…how everything else’s in private collections: the profanities had been confiscated earlier, way back in the chaos, were then snatched up illegally or — hanging frontside toward the wall for the crying, the indulgence of anonymous bids — for nothing at auction and are presently on show in the grandiose homes and offices of those who’d afforded them and their risk…

Only hours to Opening, the exceedingly fey he’s probably a fayg partyplanner (hired here in return for his silence regarding the ongoingly if slowly investigated arson of the Island, it’s said, that old Xmas Eve), he camps around, this way then that, the chicken they’re serving tonight with its head cut off, and, God, the caterers, they’re too late. More like gliding on the floors, which have just been polished, in slippered feet then his socks: he’s limp wrists, sighs, and eye rolls, in a symbolic blue bekishe (Zaiden, velvetpiped, a twelvebutton customjob, with superadded pink triangle satin appliqué just for fun) fixed with a white gartel — blue & white, the color scheme of the evening, their lives — flapping in the wake of his hustle; he’s lisping a shriek loudly, hurling lallations, his lambdacist orders; desperate pleas without please at his staff of lackeys, assistant and attendant, who relay all demands to their own assistants and attendants, who in turn pass along the frustrated rage, down the hierarchy then onto whom, the last repository of their nerves and their angst — the interning unacceptable, here just to get a little experience as the party responsible, he’s not even getting paid, whoever’s son he is or the friend of a friend. Tonight, it’s an Eden motif, paradise is the theme, Pardes, that’s why it’s so much, too much, all this work, you think the prelapsarian comes easy, come again, broaden your mind with the budget: the idea being to transform the lobby interior of the Museum into as much of an oasis as possible, as paradisiacal as resources allow; fourrivered, duly labeled the Tigris and the Euphrates, the Pishon and Gihon, surrounded by palms, real trees then fake ones allocated, too, when an emergency Miami shipment went delayed and then lost. A Garden…at least the appletrees have arrived no problem, down from Upstate then potted packed into the fray, the forbidden Tree the tallest and widest, under which the fayg meets with his waitstaff, foreigners gathered around its trunk for instruction and pep: to encourage guests to gather from this orchard at will, take their pick; the branches will be restocked with produce throughout the proceedings. An hour before doors he’s going totally manic, in a fit, an outright conniption: they’re ready for any creation, prepared for any fall, as expected, as has been amply budgeted and contracted for, but something’s missing, someone’s late, not quite right…boss, ¿qué pasa? what’s wrong? an attendant asks the scream echoed amid the lobby’s vast vault; a moment later he’s in tears on the phone dialing frantically, like where the hell’s our goddamned snake, where the gehenna’s the handler at, listen, is this the Bronx Zoo — I’m hanging up if I’m not hearing hiss…

Not that anyone’ll notice…why, there’s just too much going on, are too many people, person pressing pushing up against personality, straining to keep their manners good, their faces fixed pleasant: dressed impressed and to, their dresses swishing up against the pleat and flat of their pants, folds to tails, striped, starred, ringed, then bound with necklaces chained of bracelets. Necks low, hems high. Anything but ashamed of their naked. Here, they’re poised to point, their lips pursed to whisper within the tomblike calm of the Museum’s dark cool, amid the wellventilated, recirculated air, this spring garden, a milder jungle — to live landscaped amid such drastic swoops almost demanding of awe, the ornamentation sinuous atop the hard lines, the austere, lean geometry, the public weight scaled of fruitbasket and bird…everyone focused, on point, kept on topic: on the preservation, on memory, anticipatory of what, a holy vessel to be expertly processed, labeled for ease of digestibility (though no one’ll eat it — how could they even begin to pronounce its manyclaused bracha?); but the manners, they can’t last forever, pleasantries live only halflives, remember, these are the Affiliated we’re talking about, you know the type and so soon, talk in its most or maybe least stupefying varieties breaks out, comes echoing loudly from whisper to shout; there’s fartalk, neartalk, eyetalk, nosetalk, sidetalk in all of its multiloquent geographic manifestations: Upper Eastsidetalk, Upper Westsidetalk, Westchestertalk, Joyseytalk, the murmurings bebabbled of Greenwich on down to Red Bank…smalltalk, largetalk, tabletalk, thattalk, thistalk, overtalk, under-talk, nthtalk, xtalk — a gossip apocalypse, a pack of lips…a salivary fleck-flock, a herding of mouths — this mass kibitzing, this metakvetch, orbits of noise gathering around the assemblage, to ring, planetary gas, puffing the drapery, wilting the appletrees despite the fayg’s fervid shpritzing; guests (they’ll never forget they once had been guests) discussing weighty matters, doing deals of Creationary proportions, spying steals of Biblical scope: Numbers, Numbers 2, Numbers 3, names dropped then picked up, dusted off, returned to Sender again whether Mr. or Mrs., this is our second & final attempt…linnerplans preempted by only a sneeze, a mere cough, matches handshaked on and off and then on again as offhandedly as possible as empires plot themselves then disintegrate to dust all around them; seismographs altared upon the floor register the insistent stomping of feet, the whole mess standing, shuffling, rising, sitting, squeezing hearts’ tight on loveseats, the spinechill wombcold of low tallowtoned marble benches, blue & white slipcovered sofas rented out for a mint down, hauled in for the occasion only to wear and then, stain, they’re pressed against walls, pushed up against doors…standing high up on chairs and on tables, how they’re speechifying, offering jeremiads, ezekielisms, and isaiahtirades, exhorting from chairs stacked one on the other or set atop tables or stacked and set thereupon both, how they’re leaning up against the balcony’s railing draped blue & white, too, in the standard of the U.S. of Affiliation, show your respect.

And above it all, the klezmiros, the music: there’s a piano quintet installed on the marble loggia presently givingout a specially orchestrated version of the Kol Nidre, Opus number does it really matter, from the Yom Kipper liturgy, this string quartet loaned out from the concertmastered ranks of the New York Philharmonic following their shockhaired pianist conducting con moto with thrusts directed seatward and brutal, the rise and fall of his tush: a lilt carried upon the cellist’s vibrato, the lefthand tremolos of the piano…the music comes tenuous, energetic but nervous, shaky, as if a touch off, a mite stressed, stuffily muffled, gagged to a sour still in the throat; then, in lowing fortes and high sforzando wails, how they’re shaking, they’re rattling the bartender’s bottles at the temporary bar, just for the night, draped in the same scheme of things…waitresses drop troughs left, right through the feverish shvitz, the competing blur of talk, ganze gossip, kopdreyenish, a lashon hara from mouths round in hora; lightly moustachioed waiters, their yarmulkes must be tapeddown, glued on, ladling out cupfuls runnething over, flutes and splits of champagne, and mensching, too, the vorspeizen trays, making sure, as ordained by Shade, to give everyone the option of saying the appropriate blessing before their indulgence (placards are made available printed with the prayers in the small scribblings of two different tongues): they nibble away at their benedictions, then partake of the healthily blessed…nu, the Tongue? a fat lady shrieks, what about the Tongue, the preview, the relic, that’s what we paid for; Tongue Schmongue, says her gin-rummy partner (or that’s just what she’s been drinking), you look like sooo gorgeous, will you just look at yourself, I just can’t believe it, hiccough…a woman whose dress she’s stepping on asking then if she’s heard the one about the, is drowned out when she’s elbowed into the fountain, the one to which the it’s labeled Tigris again flows, shouldered in headfirst and so the joke that’ll distance it All, just lost, stompedupon dress ripped off in her fall, shreds of exposed flesh, scandalous to love it, that and her humiliation, too, and they do; nudged to a laugh by a middleaged urologist-to-the-stars, or that’s just his type, you’d be lucky to get an appointment while still active…lost his wife to the turmoil, she’s here somewhere, he’s sure, though if not, there’s always another, he’s just tired of looking for Her (the vest of his threepiece being buttoned up by the fast fat fingers of a wife never his and hymn, there’ve been three of them now); the woman founders, her highheels fall from her to float, her fingers to linger at fountain’s bottom for shekels loosed, which she fists to the carpet that leads beyond, and then higher…fastened down by brass over the marble to make for footfalls so unconscionably soft, in their wary and panicky stalking of hard culture and symbol — all the way up the stairs to the loggia and its overture, now beginning again without warning: who’s that cellist, anyone know? a woman making breasty headway through the muck, jostling, stepping feet with stilettos without apologizing as if she’d ever, to this waiter she knocks who’s holding a tray of drinks up over his head, how he drops it, missing her must be blessed but splintering everywhere, glistening slivers of glass, chandeliershards catching the last of the light through the windows arched overhead, sloshing slivovitz whether plum, pear, or peach schnapps, frothing remains, bubbly champagne over the carpet, out into the wide grouts between the blocks matched for vein, the marble tombslabs, the gray gravevaults, the still living scattering themselves out of the way of the jeroboams unto nebuchadnezzers’worth, this foaming lacteal puddle forming around him a frown, a reprimand that’s maternal yet firm, the waiter just standing there silent, immobilized, awaiting his punishment, the retribution we’ve paid so dearly to exact: they surround him tighter and tighter, hurl imprecations, taunts and threats, but just as quickly as that begins, everyone’s distracted again, diverted, turns, is turned all around — toward this ruach, doorward, this strangling wind, divine breath on the fresh haircut backs of their necks…and now on their faces turned, too, madeup and puffy with blemish, tannedblack or clearing though surgically cut: with the silence of speed, a swift glide, without creak, crack, or groan, we’re talking greased, maintainence oiled; the doors sweep the halves of a clockface across the mingledulled floor; the cogs to an eternal timepiece, shadows, twohanded, now one, shadow the hour, across the newly finished mosaic that rings the lobby in widening suns (though a mosaic that no one knows, in full, what it is — no one can tell, they’re standing on it, they’re of it — perhaps it’s a rendering of our incomplete Creation). This is the shutting of the doors, the Closing of the Books, the locking of the gates in the offseason, the offhoured latenight to this winter of judgment: the hinges relent, a last shaft of light gives out from the unified draft, a spotlit escape of air and dust, the wind of the weather outside staining across them…swept narrow, thinned to a kiss; and then darkness, total and only: the doors settle, the strait gate presently shuts — and yet, with them left inside.

Where they become the exhibits…and how no one knows, no one understands: they just proceed with their mingling, they talk themselves on, jaw and thrust tongues, as bottles pour out into glasses that clink; ladies in the powder room, which is a lavishly appointed facility, staffed with dour, whispery immigrant attendants hired away from area hotels especially for this evening and now everafter, they offer hot and moist towelettes, perfumes and mints…they the women all pause their ministrations a moment at the sudden silence — then resume, din, mingling mingle, while their husbands they wait outside, glance at their watches, wait, talk talk, get dragged away, by associates, by acquaintances, business partners, brothers-inlaw, and by strangers, there’s a mensch I’d like you to meet…into discussions, discursions, digressions importuned upon deviant involutions of tangents. Eden’s gates have shut, have locked, keeping them here, fallen within, frozen in time, frozen as time. To live here, to become exhibits themselves, as they’re already exhibits of themselves, and then for themselves, too, exhibited exhibitionists, say: mulling the mulledover forever, ruminating until the food and drink run dry, they’re examining, framing, and posing, appraising the pagelike walls with thumb and with tongue…scratching with questionmarked fingers their heads, then at others’ detailoriented they’re scrutinizing to ever, patronizing patrons, both viewers, the viewed, the subject and its object all talked, compared, contrasted, parsed a rolled tongue into one, and then swallowed: eventually finding their ways out into the far halls, Tonguesearching at first, Tongueforgetting too soon, deep into the shadowy spaces, the attic’s dim ducts and then the underground stairwells of emergency access…the furthest recesses of memory’s muse; the evening running forever late, the world, too, damned, without exit.

And as everything is nested in everything, and That, too, in everything, unto when or wherever you just get tired, decide to call it a day and it was and it was good…or, maybe Gnosticwise, that heresy older than heresy, older even than the One True God against which or Whom one would rail — holding that the ruler of this world is only the ruled of a greater world, then that the ruler of that world is in turn only the ruled of an even greater world, and then yaddaing blah imploding on down through the core of the cosmos, if you’re interested, threehundred and sixtyfive times, which, FYI, was how many days they’d had in their old years, way back when: O to have lived before the Sixthousands…a dayschool group yawning, fidgeting amid a handful of misanthropic sketchers in ash, in ashes and uniformed sackcloth themselves (as thinly sketched as they are here, it’s nothing compared to how blank their own pages), annoyed and trying to appear as such, mourning recess, feeling sorry — then, there’s also a Museum of Museums, the mensch says, gasping for air, and here there’s all of one exhibit, one piece…this spindly docent he folds himself up in his map of the premises, distractedly forces it around himself, over his eyes, around his ears, nose, and mouth until the urge obligingly rips a hole for his voice, high and yet groucho, at the southernmost tongue of the southernmost state, which is this one.

It’s named where it is, he says, what it is, holding the torn shreds in his old, unsure hands — it’s the world!

Unimpressed, the group from the dayschool leans up against the walls, futzes with the peel of the plaster.

But you’ve come for the Inhibition, no?

Follow me, he says with a tremor, singlefile, this way…

This here is PopPop’s unit towered down where the sun don’t shine, and this particular docent (an ancient stoop of a Miami native, a retiree, slippered, rippedarmchair historian who wouldn’t be made assistant to the least curator despite his appeals and the expertise of his simper), he guided on Mondays & Thursdays, then mensched the Information Desk on Fridays until sundown, at which position he’d give out only information about the desk: this is wood, he’d say, rap his knuckles atop, about two centuries old by the best guesstimate, mine…the tree, it was sawed down, wood planed, legs nailed into place, then all of it varnished; it was owned by a resident of this tower who died with the Rest, shipped Over Here from the Old World, Over There roundabout last millennium, midcentury or so before, though who knows for sure…one can’t accurately tell the extent of its use due to frequent restaining: a light red, I’d say, at least it once was or should be, a pity that now all colors come hard to me; it’s the old eyes, and the weather — but seriously (refers to his notes): handbrushed cherry almost oxblood’s its name with a nice fluted edge, two drawers and two leaves for extension, seats eight, I’m telling you, you couldn’t do better…

Here at PopPop’s, he shoes polish, a volunteer when no one else would, he’d often joke around to groups that he lived here, as if underwater, down in the foyer’s fountain, with a ram’s horn for a snorkel how he’d subsist on spare shekels, drinking his dwell, accepting donations and wishes in kind…

Restored some time ago thanks to funding Federal matched by the State from the taxdeductible Other, various recently reprivatized sectors guilted into writing it all off on the wind, this tower’s lately sealprotected, signedover as landmark, thing even has a plaque on its face that they earmarked for it to be polished by hand once a moon; and lately, its penthouse condo unit’s become a place of pilgrimage for dayschools, and for yeshivas, too, when their kinder do the work, put in the hours, seem to merit six goldstarred and four quarters straightA’d a vacation from the Law, their studies thereof — a firsthand field-trip to sacrilege: Isaac Israelien, is what the plaque says, Zeyde (Grandfather) To Benjamin Israelien, Inhabited The Top Floor Unit Of This Condominium Tower, 5735–5760, Hosting His Grandson Here Between 17–23 Tevet Of That Last Tragic Year, The Latter Date Also The Day Of Isaac Israelien’s Death.

This would be Arschstrong’s room, the mensch relates to the group, who remembers their history? Come on, don’t be shy, Arschstrong was the special poo poo friend of whom, anyone, anyone?

Nothing.

Of PopPop Israelien, right!

Wow, you boychicks sure do know your history!

Pity him, he never gives up.

And whose PopPop was PopPop Israelien? zeyde to whom? do you know? It just happens to be a young boy named Benjamin Israelien!

Not much younger than you are.

Isn’t that wild?

But there’s no response, nothing registering, payos twirled around pale fingers, poked into sockets staring, vacant: who wants to rent them, get in on the groundfloor?

Benjamin Israelien, anyone know who that was?

That familiar to anyone?

Anyone?

How he always stops visitors as they leave, detains them (only a moment) to show them a photograph, found in Polandland or thereabouts, ca. 5761 it’s been dated, asking them to identify the subject — and surely, it’s Him.

Inquisitioned, they’re given the following options.

Is it, he asks—

A.) Baruch Spinoza, you know him?

B.) Your Zeyde you never knew, so sad how he died before you were born?

C.) Your Onkel, I mean, but when he was young and with his beard black as night?

D.) All of the above, as we’re all of us just manifestations of let’s say infinite Substance?

E.) None of the above.

F.) No one special.

Thus far they still must be thinking, still weighing their choice though already chosen — the scale of their eyes & ears tipping the scales of the heart…the choice already chosen for them by their own ignorance, or by curiosity’s failure; if you think you know so much then just tell me, the docent’s waiting to hear, don’t keep us in the dark, it’s a sin…as no one’s yet identified Him, Him as He was or is still (though to be fair, the horns B’s usually depicted with, when He’s depicted, throw most off), in this passport photograph represented as one Jacobson, Esq., ripped, creased, corners bent, found down the well of a village sunk so far to the east, the Ost it was called that it might be all the way around the world west again, lost.

Nu, undeterred, so what about this one…and he goes and retrieves another snapshot out from under his snapbrimmed cap, passes it around, this photograph nearly identical to that previous save the black that’s now blond and blue and more of it up top, too, that and the weightgain and that innocence in the smile and the hope at the seat of the nose: hymn…is this Israel? he asks their shadows down the emptied sidewalk, the group returning to school and then home upon buses short and fat and chartered, and so no, he answers himself, he has to, but it was taken by him, Israel, upon a Friday and at the very last eighteenminuted moment before the Sabbath’s set, mil plag hamincha the night of the 24th of old December it’d been dated on the back, the eighth and last of their mingling existences soaked amid the developing solution of night, before the bris the next morning never to be — a moment posed Him alone and already standing on two legs and in a diapered once white Oxford buttondown of Israel’s, leaning against the stove he said oven she said in the kitchen and smile, Say Dairy! a moment before meat, before candlelighting, the savrei Kiddush, all that Blessed art Thou King of the Universe Who brings forth bread from the ShopRite conveniently located at the corner of Route 9 & W. Kennedy Blvd., then dinner, their last Shabbos’ last dinner in the company of last guests lately cometh, and then — their fill later, His eyes still dazzingly flashed — time for bed, and for a bedtime story, too, the eighth and last of the seven that Israel had delivered unto Him as if dreams…meaning, how He’d always fall asleep during the telling: not even a lip laid empty on His mattress where His father might sit and spiel, and so the story’s again delivered standing, In the beginning leaning up against the door’s wall then settling his he thinks old bones senior spine down in one of the two new matching chairs they’d just bought hospitality sidechairs solid hardwood you wouldn’t believe what they’d paid — one for her and one for Israel stained a blue and a whitish pink they’re standing again to end one week ago tonight, he says, and you Benjamin my boychick how you came into this world, Creation’s over already and I promise that tomorrow night, promise that every night I’ll have a story to tell you, you’re loved; wait, just you wait, I’m going to be gone a little while, I’m going to go to sleep, just a little (too, exhausted, but think of the wife), but then I’ll be back at your side, you’ll open your eyes he says and like poof! I’ll be there, I’ll never leave you, and ready again with a story another story always another they say the Shema now O Israel the Adonai our Elohaynu is One both Adonai and Elohaynu and Israel, how he pulls up the covers, comforting up to His nose, which is already haired, sneezing gesund, it’s a reaction to feathers, the goosedown, His asthmatic allergic rhinitis, sinusitis, whatever they’re not doctors we can’t all be His parents hadn’t yet figured that out, give them a break, cut them the slack of their jaws up past His ears to His eyes hiding beneath, fear, suspicion, paranoia this how do I know, that tomorrow, it might — it’s only been a week after all…Israel to kiss Him through the comforting covers, the sheets that’d been Rubina’s spare pair, to then go off to His mother, his wife, their masterly bed with its dimmed lights amid kindled candles, unscented paraffin jars, sensual yahrezeits in memoriam the first sparks, what initially attracted, romanticizing the plushed vault of their room (its purple throwpillows thrown to the vacuum’s threespeeded winds, Wanda’s gusts), to lie down on his side, the Side that’s always been his ordained since ever before time, to shoulder-sniff, kiss at the flush of her neck, Hanna’s, him to molelick, wenlap, rim with his tongue the bones of her collar, with meat teeth to nibble at her if singly pierced lobes…to knead her dimpled thighs for rising in the stove he said oven she said of dream, and then — to enter her there, even only a week after His birth how she submits to him, still, to pass himself through her gates, and there, inside, in the midst of that lowflowing river, snaking through the winter season of her garden to spend himself there, how he can’t help himself, that’s why he needs her, to seed yet another, wants only one more again, expected to enter the world around the month of the true New Year nine months from the turn of the false…one who’d end up revealing herself, her because the boy just to look at Him He’s justifiably a freak, just my luck, nothing more, only around the ten days that follow in mourning the Rosh falling Hashana failing itself already upon that night dawning next the Day of Atonement, gefailing, gefalling, gevalt — her to be birthed into the center aisle of the synagogue, between the pews, to be swaddled in the mechitza, separated from father and brother in the very cradle of curtain divisive, and there to daven for forgiveness, for what, for what else, upon her very first day, in her very first hour and still without name, to proclaim in the midst of her people her sin, her one and her only unnamed…to repent for her very own birth. Having had no choice in the matter, if matter ever she was or would be, unlike this one, here, this Redeemerette, His Savioress out of pity anointed in responsibility, arrayed in salary and spoils, pinched pennies and the rewards that come from getting reimbursed now without a receipt: Hava, in this room freshly wallpapered, “Spring Flowers” in bloom, who knows what kind flowers grown in this house just paid off.

This is Wanda the maid now Wanda the maydel: in one side out the other, poof, as they say, and that’s that. Wanda Hanna’s One how she’s now Wanda-Hava, Hava as in Adam’s wife Eve in the new language olden again, as in that song they’d sung at their wedding high on babka and chairs: Hava negilah, won’t you, as in…you Wanda a little something, and don’t you deny yourself in my house, then why don’t you Hava little something — and he did, have her, still has: seven circumlocutions cracked out of Instruction, a host of prayerful songs shired after she’d learned what there was to learn, studied after she’d shaved what there was to shave, as per tradition, and so much, too, eighteen blessings after morning’s blessed the ceremony at the chintzy hall off the Turnpike, ink dripping from their ketubah witnessed by the caterer and bandleader, the wet of their names mingling and, with ten hours then at the sprawl of motel across the asphalt that gave you the deal if you went with what package spent in delicious Godentwining, in delectable Unification, he drove her in his tenyearold Taurus home, ensconced her in the kitchen: new sconces, three dishwashers, three fridges and three ranges, meat, milk, and pareve, from parents, his now made hers, who knew from machatunim’s the term, and there set her to work, stirring up the pot, preparing.

I Hava Wanda, I Hava Wanda, I Hava such a lucky mensch, a mucky match save passport and his bank balance, whispers as he palms her, shvitz upon her swell…witness the happiness of this new Affiliatedess with her appropriately Affiliated husband, who’d made a respectable woman out of her, a maid and more, a wife and a mother primigravida; in this world, there aren’t any irreligious naturalization problems: she is that she is now that the papers have gone through, a book’s worth of them, and nobody’s asking any questions, us sons we just don’t know how…hymn, maybe some aspersions thrown to glass-houses (perhaps their greenhouse just going up outside, alongside the tennis-court and the inground swimmingpool, subcontracted through his brother to a friend of his brother who’s been going through some tough times, his brother, too, their own many brethren, our sons and who isn’t, we’ll vouch), but nu — who are They to make judgments?

And still she launders and presses and folds clothes, now for herself and for her husband, too, and soon soon enough please stop shushkeh shushkeleh we’ve shtupped all genug for the baby inside her she’ll name whatever her husband wants, but whom she’ll secretly call Benjamin: oy, it’s a boy, to be a boy, congratulations…may he kill you in kinderbirth, may you die at kinderbed, upon it what death could be better, a hearty Mazel Tov all around.

Spit spit spit.

O Adela, she thinks as she irons the skirts she’s inherited, each of her blouses, too…O Adela back home, Over There back dead with her relations, their blood.

And Spit.

And so now in the quietly massive hours of Shtum, with her husband sleeping on the side he picked out as his long ago, long before he ever had a wife, it’s the side he clung to even in the belly of his mother olev hashalom toward the left kidneyward as if a worrying growth, while he sleeps undisturbed, exhausted, womanspent and that for the first time in his life he would remember if ever he were in the habit of memory, knowing nothing either of her Wanda’s past besides her foreign ancestry, her vague though desirable eastness, which is what had attracted him to begin with, she says to herself in her own language though she thinks it, too, in our own (she can’t help it, that’s why she has him, why she’s having him — to have someone to speak with, someone to correct her mistakes), then hides herself down in her mouth and down to her gut, to rummage for Instinct long fallow: still troubling, that she still can’t place that odd ancient whoever he was who’d attended dinner at her house, theirs, the old theirs that night, The Night, or had he, stolen in, could he have and how, and how Hanna’d seemed to think that Israel knew him and how Israel of course had seemed to think that Hanna knew him had known him maybe and how the two of them they seemed to think that if not them then perhaps the Tannenbaums they’d invited him, had they, and why, maybe he was poor, or that his wife she passed on, he didn’t have a meal that night that Sabbath when Shabboses still were temporal; pants, something about pants, maybe, or other, sockshoes…and Hava she knows she didn’t know him and doesn’t, did she or remember him leaving, and maybe it wasn’t dinner at all, after all perhaps it was after, nuzzling her head into the pink give of the pillow, the downy maw, the wishniak’s hairily soft and softening mouth whose stem feels topped with a feather: he didn’t give a name she placed or could or ever and he laughed when appropriate but too loudly, insistently didn’t say anything else, and ate almost nothing, like a bird, like a boyd (her husband), didn’t eat anything at all or even drink; had he forgotten or what, who he himself was, God, who was he and how did he get there, did he, and what part did he play in this spiel, which, if any at all? Then, she sleeps, snores an ocean of skin out of her mouth to soak along the round of her form…where’d you get that idea, going geist into her mind she’s woken again in a screamed shvitz hers or his by her husband (the mensch, he’d just been promoted at the slaughterhouse to Head Knife Inspector, which is a position equal in rank to the Inspector of the Finenesses of Sandgrains Used in Hourglasses, he’d joke, I’ve certainly put in the time — how much he’s proud he usually sleeps without calm, a drippy and dreamless neurotic), who shakes her and holds her and holds and shakes her at once to tell her it’s all a dream, reassure, just a dream he’s shouting and what to invoke to ameliorate, to go downstairs and nextdoor to grab the three friends husband or wife and kinder required for the prayer, what’s their names: I have seen a good dream, you have seen a good dream, it is good and may it become good, may the Merciful One transform it to the good, may it be decreed upon it seven times from heaven that it become good and always be good, it is good and may it become good blah blah…sleepinghand grabbing for the manifold amulets that hang from the scald of a knob at the door to their room, the Master Suite’s something anything to ward off: maybe that string of wolves’teeth, the cask of oil luggaged home from Safed, a missed enunciation of the O so many Names…

But a dream: every tradition old enough to regard a dream, any dream, all, as both prophetic and meaningless knows the spiel — gehenna, they invented it: our tradition’s a longtime wanderer of the worn road Nezach to Hod. And so the meaning, if any? Who knows from meaning anymore?

The prophecy, though, in her mind, and I’m talking retrospective, prophecy of the past, to linger its moment, becoming moist between the legs, a smell seeping up from under the lawn, and she…though it’s impossible, isn’t it, she was downstairs, she was downstairs-downstairs, no, she was Underground, doing unspeakable things for money in those days; he, her husband, should never uncover that nakedness: Israel, a passionate lover, though oftentimes a premature ejaculator, these thoughts! had kissed his son after finishing his story, and the old whoever, whitebearded, did he, peeked a chin in from the flue of the fireplace for show; she wraps herself tightly amid the tender errant down of her arms, the sheets of her mother-inlaw, her shviger’s her name warm to the tongue unlike her, struggles with the angel if it even is an angel and not Moloch Him or Itself, never quite figured that out either, Who kisses this into her mind, lips to impress rivulets, riverine valleys of wighair down her neck how she sleeps with it on so as not to forget, lapse the Eden then default on the mortgage…he’d a beard white like a billygoat’s, an old mensch she thinks, no goy, God forbid in whose house and foundationally ancient, maybe from the synagogue as old as all menschs are or once were, his beard she remembers, though, the color, or lacking color, of snow, of Nitor it’s said, a whiteness shining, a purity, a moon just like a shekel unsparing above. Had he come down through the chimney? Leave me alone! I’m a newlywed wife and a mama-to-be, not a prophet or soothsayer of secondhandom! Be gone and cast thee out yadda yadda psht.

He seemed if not at least tired then overly so, swung his watch, hanging his stockings o’er the ledge of the fireplace stuffed with varicose evidences of worry and work.

O thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder, the young lioncub and the dragonviper shalt thou trample under feet!

Is’d kissed B, Hanna’d always used words like smooch, smackeroo, how’d she expect me to learn her language like that…had to almost reach up on the tips of his toes to kiss Him and where, on the hot head, some say, upon the fevered forehead, others, lips spreading their pursy unsmiling mark to stretch love’s skin across the head of His loins…a pressure, a taut tingling in the prostate — then left to attend to his wife, their Hanna resting up from her exertions and cooking, the cookingbirth, the usual that she’d say the ush upon that Shabbat almost day, how that strange old liverish mensch, a skinned fatty garbed in warning red and pure white sashed how he’d later found Him left-overstuffed, then talked his way upstairs, upstairs-upstairs and to His room, nudged close, sat on a chair closer, B still diapered in a new white shirt fastened snugly around Him even on the second button of its adjustable cuffs, a pinpoint Oxford of His father’s, which were all of them too small for Him, too tight, bursting the buttons, rips in His torn, everything hanging out O the shame the embarrassment, Talmud says it’s worse than death: mortality, mortification is, and so why’m I raving like this, she asks herself (but she shouldn’t be too alarmed — you know how hard it is to get a Get these days, you wouldn’t believe how expensive, too), the mensch he shuckled a duchen maybe there in his chair, Israel’s up in the room how he muttered a few words more he had to shut his eyes to remember, then got himself up.

How do I know this?

As if to ask, what’s red and white and bearded all over…it couldn’t have been him, no, you know, she didn’t even believe in him back when she believed, when she was supposed to — and how what you don’t believe in, it doesn’t exist…back home it’d been Jesus who’d brought them the presents, that infant martyred and not this sorry schlump.

Yes! she shrieks, forgive her, and finally sits up in bed next to her husband who’s up on his elbow suggesting remedies even more recondite between dictating nistering lists of anagrams, abbreviations, and other obscurities of formal propition, she’s telling him just yes, yes, that’s where I, no, I’m sure of it: he’d walked downstairs…

Havaleh my mamele, are you alright, say something, sh, don’t talk, don’t strain yourself, relax — you want I should fetch you a glass water, warm you some milk? Don’t tell me, speak up…

Blood, was it blood?

I’m not a mindreader, you know…

But she silences him with a thrown arm and a throwpillow, says to him God to anyone that the mensch, listen, how he crept himself his way downstairs down the stairs a little I think after midnight.

Hear me out.

I’d come upstairs to get a drink when the Underground went dry, which believe me that didn’t happen too often.

Underground where, Halvamind Hava…what are you talking, what’re you talking, you’re talking, still, are you possessed, has a dybbuk swallowed down your throat and’s speaking your tongue?

No, we met in the kitchen, that’s where we always, it was dark, always it was dark…the only light for memory this the dark of the kitchen where, and listen, that stain in the grout, guilt about my teeth, selfconscious the nick, the nook, the kitchen where Hanna she’s sitting and listen, it’s important, this is earlier, you understand, this was before, and she, how with her yogurtmouth, she’s pouring to me like another one, she said, with her dairymouth, she’d say, another one…like I don’t know whether I can go through with this with another, whether I can survive it, Wanda, him or her, whether I can you know or not handle it, manage, whether or not I can like deal.

But he wants a son, and maybe baby this one, this’ll be the One — really, like what, if any, am I supposed to offer her in return?

Israel, he really wants it, but I feel like…some sort of consolation, something Wanda’d thought, like maybe don’t worry, no, sh, not to fret — you’re no enabler, not a milkfactory, no churnerouter of babies…talking like she’s in this fancy schmancy mysticalized trance; the cheap pink curtains, minor defects in workmanship, a steal from the relative of a friend’s relative as always who knows not to ask, weeped around the opened window over the twocar garage and the driveway they swell out into stormclouds — and how I get myself to the cabinet first, she says she goes and opens it wide, that’s where they kept the liquor, high cabinet, you understand after Rubina she once, the highest left one of the two above the bedecked refrigerator, lists, magnets, photos, photomagnets, polarized lists all that dreck and, nevermind, just you listen…

If it’s liquor you want, a little l’chaim, alright so I’ll go down and kook what we have, Hava, but…

No, but I open the cabinet, and I don’t know why I don’t become a crazy person and just go shout my kopf off but no, how I don’t, I just open it, go to open it up and my hand how it’s on the handle thingie to the thing and his hand, God, this plumpery witheredly thing, icky with shvitz, and as quick as any random indignity — hear how it just swoops in, scoops up the little flask of schnapps, the only thing in there, the only thing left…

Schnapps, I don’t believe we have any schnapps, Hava.

Israel was never a shikker, you understand.

Israel? How’s your health, you’re feeling well or no, should I go get the doctor or rabbi?

Yes.

You want I should disturb them on a night like this?

No.

God, tell me what you want, Wanda-Hava Rosenkrantz, anything, anything within limits; it’s only a dream, only a dream, a dream only it’s…

And then how I let go the handle, she says she grabs onto the tiny bottle, surplus from a cousin’s barmitzvah, and how we struggle for it me and him, we pull back and forth me and him we push, which cousin I don’t know, never did, him tugging this thing, this flask of schnapps we’re wrestling for it with four hands now and he’s strong but he’s old and I’m strong and young then not anymore I pull it hard once and it comes loose from his hands, but I don’t have a hold on it lose my grip and it falls to the floor, shatters all over the place, the kitchenfloors, the tile little shards of glass stuck in a pool inground ocean of thickened red is it schnapps, everywhere just everywhere I stand there just staring at it, though I really should have been mopping it up I just, that’s what I did, my job what happened he just…

You just, Hava, I’m finished listening.

And then…

You know, some people have to work tomorrow.

You know, for a living.

I forget…it’s all over now, so long ago, how it’s ancient history getting older by the day that is night what with its stars three rolled hoch horch like eyes, falls into her pillow, her mother-inlaw’s, is soon sleeping so deeply she doesn’t even remember to snore, then next morning wakes up and her husband he regards her strangely but forgets by mincha home for linner and she herself, she has no memory whatsoever and yet come the coming of dusk that night she finds herself, why, preparing him a dunch the likes of which will destroy all hope for thought both rational and not.

The mensch leaves her there lamed, passedout on the floor, unconscious, unconscionable with her head knocked on the edge of an opened knifedrawer, mamash, believe it or not it’s the emes, rushes back up to B’s room, he’d just wanted a l’chaim, was expecting warmedgoodies, Ima’s milk, too, had been disappointed, decided then to keep his own self warm with blankets and covers, shuts the door, props the other chair up against it, Hanna’s, and B He’s awake now again, already sitting up in His bed He stares dumbly.

While downdownstairs of eternity, moons prior to moons, halves of moons, quarters, crescented slivers these falcate whatever miserly dieting wanes, Hanna pats at her swell, offers Wanda one more drink of this one doesn’t count, shot without label, nervously peeled, crumpled, and balled, she doesn’t know from liquor, anyway, neither of them do except Wanda who she wouldn’t admit, a celebration for the sake of observance, while she herself, Hanna, shouldn’t, must abstain, upon the advice of the life bottled within her.

This mensch pets with mitten His forehead thrice, then mutters again with shut eyes, holds a heart the left one as he shuckles a bissele more as he murmurs, strokes his beard, absentmindedly gripes from it all the dark hairs, curls his toes in his boots (schmuck he never took them off, left them to dry in the fireplace, he’s dirtying the house terribly inconsiderate who ever heard, how was he raised and by whom, let’s go to their house and burn the barn down, its stable for the reindeer and sleighs) then asks B, what, something, if He wants to see some pictures of his grandkinder maybe and B, iffy, was this His father, is this the mensch who’s been here seven now and one night previous, and if not, then what, if any, was the difference, and his right to sit in the Presence of, anyway nods an assent, how not to and the pictures they’re shownoff in the light of the mensch, his white, the beardhalo, balltopped cap’s gloriole, aureole, icebowed hairy halo illuminating the names of those depicted filledin-the-blanks, in red feltpen looped feminine along their snowywhite backs, where everyone was and, too, what they were doing or up to, who was married to whom and who was the whom and who else had who with whomever, what they all did to do well for themselves for a living and how they made or make out at it and the like, and how they’re all evilly elfin, small rodentlike things who don’t appear to have been made in the image of their Patriarch, if that’s what he is, but more in the opposite image, He’s thinking his under-developed, their undeveloped, the true deepest negative…until ‘Twas this knock at the door and the rednosed redeyed mensch he doesn’t rise, mouse a stir at all or even rattily twitch, merely gathers in his sack, cinches its strings tight. Hanna’s chair up against the door bolted, he’d leaned it there when he entered, came back up, it’d been purchased just last week with its twin at a discount and sugarplum soft in their vinyl upholstery, for both parents to witness their miracle they’ve never been sat in, remain unmoved, the room entire, decorated in baby’s blue for luck or hope, Mazel and filled full with stuffedanimals, pillows God everything else stuffed stomachs and heads and dinosaurs in their aeroplanes that’d seem ridiculous in a room belonging to a grown mensch, and He was grown, already, is, of B’s size by now, how the whole room is stilled: then, a softer knock pause knock knock knock at a door down the hall, the Master Bedroom maybe and the mensch stiffens, slowly rises from Israel’s chair, hesitant to go up to the door and feel a jambjammed and bleeding mitten at its fiery handle; as he rises — his chair tilts to collapse, legs knuckle, kneel, bow, Israel’s not replaced though it’s still under warranty but instead to become reassembled, weldnailed or glued perfectly together again by the Garden, in the Garden, in His own house again this one here once atop the Island atop the bay whose waters suicide themselves upon the coast of this world, as it’s known…only, then, to be burnt, to become ashed into perfection again only in the World to Come, if you’re familiar, if undead and hopeful — the covers go up again, go up over His nose, up over His eyes, blanket His forehead and hair.

Hanna resigned, sighing her soul out.

B under His blanket His covers, shivering how He shvitzes, wet He looses Himself, a slow slowing trickle shed all down His thighs, limbs writhing in warmth soon to leave Him, and then — and then nu it’s nothing, until Wanda: she who’s the mother now of a boy, the son her husband always wanted to name him Jacob Rosenkrantz his father’s Isaac Rosenkrantz, father of another Israel himself to father, time enough, how you know him…Isaac, I mean, yet another who, the one with the, and who, again, with the son who’ll be redeemed soonish enough from a Cohen it’s called, a Priest, the class who but, forget it, for a sum not to be sneezed at, gesundheit Wanda she remembers now, now rocking Benjamin, no Isaac, no Jacob, Israel in her arms he’s Yisroel, remembers only around midday and with the wash still to do and the, that night how she woke Him up up there in His room, in which He was alone and how she fought, how she struggled to get Him, all of Him to get it all proppedup and how, He didn’t recognize, how could He’ve been expected to know her, how’d she then waded through His parent’s room, dead, a storm outside His siblings’, His sisters’ dead all twelve of them together in their room alone in their rooms and how at last she’d come to His, and, hymn, and the rest…

And now her here, alone, too, if alive and with her son about midday with the drying and the washing of the dishes still to do and the cooking she has, too, with Hanna’s landrover one of three of their cars the other two you wouldn’t believe what they cost, always it’s leaking oil in the driveway below there’s a stain and as she looks out the window it looks like what else, who else’s face stained — and a hungry an always hung thirsty Rosenkrantz with a honeyed tongue gilding away raw at a nipple.

And yet somewhere outside this Ghetto, tonight, we live, somehow we’ve survived.

Our kinder have been born into a reduxed Golden Age, haven’t they, a new, quietleafed looparound added onto the Development’s annex: into a veritable Pax Americanus, in which Affiliation let’s say’s not only acceptable, OK (a world leftover from the War, the World one I mean, the Second), but also maybe admirable, in fashion, trendy…minorities overcoming obstacles, and good media coverage on that from inmost city to outmost Nowhere, this State truly Godforefutzed; pride in Them, in Us, succeeding, majority at large aiding its minority in rediscovering roots, and in reviving old practices…alienation as entrance, and so why not taking pride in that in an enriching, pluralistic, aren’t-we-so-damned-Demoncratic sense, with us and I mean Us attempting to barrierbreak, to cross borders until the only barriers we’ll ever break again, the only borders we’ll ever hope to cross, will just be those of our own creative erection — and who to apologize to after that? But what’s the alternative? Storms trooping death? That’s not what we want, is it? But that’s how we shine, how we thrive, how we’ve stayed alive all these sufferings — and perhaps even asking for it all the while, Who forbid, inviting It into our houses, our homes: ask and thou shalt receive, ask for the worse and thou shalt receive the worst, and the line for complaints, it forms to the Links.

Every year on the month on the day on the hour, the kinder — ours — begin the slow massing rebellion, the perpetual revolution of every generation since…we all remember, are O so diligent about doing so, never forget our remembering — here in our Development, here in our planned settlement, our subdivided encampment, at the edge, the furthest division most sub, and at night, they meet one another (weather permitting), amid the huddled park woods, in caves of their own dream, of their own industry, each others’ invention: tented bedsheets, clothespiled closets not yet redone for spring, and there discuss, question themselves deep into the programmed, inwired anarchy of their Religion, if religion it is, their ratty Race an anarchy that is its only true lifeforce, its only true meaning, and forceful — as natured nature from naturing nature as it’s said, they refuse to inherit ideas, they deny them, the traditions and the idealistically sacred the yadda and blah, how much they’re hesitant to revive them, to graft them on…what; to impose them upon even a quiet time, on lives that ring evermore empty, founding Paradise in the air.

But no, most won’t. Wishful thinking. Anything but.

Most will just be born into professions and marriages already vetted by their Parents, your Parent’s Friends, our Stockbrokers, and God, becoming Fathers & Mothers they’ll never kill because that would mean above all their own destruction, ours, yours, mine — and then, we’ll be mourned in the midst of the Congregation, donations to be offered in our memory: denominations of $18, 36, 54, 72 to be accepted to whichever fund best describes the limitations of your grief — like how much is your loss worth?

And our sons and our daughters will say Kaddish. But who’s to judge?

And Joseph said unto his brethren, I am Joseph; doth my father yet live? And his brethren could not answer him; for they were troubled at his presence.

Parshat Vayigash, “And then he went up…” (Genesis 45:3)

from the Torah portion read on the Shabbat of the birth of Benjamin Israelien

Punchlines

IS HERE JOSEPH.

And this is where it all ends America with me Joseph ben you don’t know him numbered much like God I don’t need a last name with everyone now ignoring enough of these no more of these recreations no more redactions reinterpretations reinventions revisions these stories resorted then shuffled restored and then footnoted endnoted gorged upon gore how I’m tired London so tired I’m Amsterdamned Avenue dead soon enough tired it’s funny like ha ha funny is here enough genug of these no more lives how I’m Big in Yisgadal Ben vyiskadah and the shemay of the gables rabah the East River canals like Venice the Ghettolocked Venezia I imagined shy but cold in an irongray windyday Italian overcoat my father had lent me for death a size too small I’d starve into it by the time we’d left the station finally Köln — Deutz 1941 I remember it as if it were they came for us with the trains the Gaugauge waiting late at the station at you say Cologne where I was born 1918 into Poland lost in the Ostlast time I kissed my eyes at the girls from Merl and the family Frank and the families Frankel and my own Mutter and father in his serge suit as dark as this Harlempark this stark Washington the Heights of yo mommamuthermutta they’re dealing what on the corner crack crank what’s the diff the girls ask the chola bodega glow O the malts and the sewer-waft smokestink gunfire knifefire the Dolchstoss the Dolchfuss the Dolfmess all this tummler noise and the roil of the Carnival Trade Fair Grounds in our muster to the A train with its circular blue and the triangular yellow Q the gelbgelded star above you can’t what with the flood of this neon up from Fort Washington the whitewash of that other winter November 19and the civilization of Broadway Brotvey breadway lined two hundred oy so streets Uptown and on into night so untested untried I’m tired of dusk the sunsetting sunsquat I’m sure the Indians once had a word for it better I should mean the feathery kind Habla se hablamos on the Hudson the river the Heights and the low sirenlights of the police the SASSSSSS at the Deutz trainstation at the George Washingtonian busterminal headed across the GWB to Colonia New Jersey from it’s called Quisqueya en el home of the footlong the two for three for a dollar wampum bead bleeding my head Madhattoe a world away from Downtown with its Bialystokers and bagels rung high a moon above the Midtown eau de Cologne from which Poland Amsterdam London I arrived how I’ve arrived George Washington Heights New York City New York State You S A can you see or hear what I’m New World America 1003that’s me you’re dialing my number (212) I forget what I’m trying to answer the phone the television born into reruns in Köln it’d been primetime Cologne eau to you 1918 Amsterdam 1946 London it was the October after November eat your dates hungry your whole grainy black & white bread to leaven the mouth thirsty those pills I can barely live to breathe to speak of the mauscheln the emes mamash flowing through my thermometer arm mercury traintrack veins no more fever this blood no more claim no stories more tattooed on my lips kissing away at the girls from the Lyzeum Esther immer besser the emes the mamash gevalt it’s the Wahrheit I’m after the Wende turned truth as they say it was ultimately Auschwitz if you know it so heaven’s assured if there’s hell I’ve been through it that morning already with the whole family mother and father and me my sister and brother assembled cold in the station the Abfahrtsbanhof Deutz keinen Deut besser als my father proud my mother proud of my father and me in my cabaret coat with my whistles and kisses the signatures we’d never Xd on all those papers the typewriters’ 5’s runic SS key after the percent sign and before the sixth open parenthesis (those Beschlagnahmeverfugung breadlined souplined lists we formed ranks filled columns long and wide how I should take out an advertisement in every major metropolitan daily half page below the fold and in full color the New York Times on your dime but the corner store the tabak sells only the Post or the Daily News El Diario so I can answer my critics café friends students and women advertise Checks Cashed for Gold publicize my asking my tsking tasking in headline Fraktur font the Gothic why datelined rapelined flatlined killed it was murder and history both it was my life what did I know of the religion the race I was just born into it was there that’s that what can I do about it but die I’m dying I’m getting ahead of myself dying I tried all these stories oy those fivestoriedwalkups and drashes makemups shtum poems about gassings and ovens an oeuvre of mass grave lieder and the silence of the weantrained Spanish goats their electrically whistling Mützen ab aria the literature that could be heard even then as far away as Canada Harmenz the FKL and its fictions novels and stories both short long and blackmilk poems by sexless and skirted the issue with the tissues on the desk shredded in the pocket the apple cored black dyedhair glassedin women teaching the inhumanities to shvartzes and Spanish at City College the Hunter crowd the testimonygatherers the witnesscollectors and the Blubo bank with its lawyer-accountantaxes postdue undone never known more pain than a Jesus Christ papercut from all these books upon books one page the Theory & Practice the same as the others six million of them paging pure snow around Auschwitz the Deutz Volksnonsense deustchteutsch the Leute Meute Heute Beute my fedora “Romazova” that matched my schlechtes French the mon ami amour cries of six months before a kiss a hug XOXXOOO for my father’s partners immigrating émigrés as the Russians say their revolution just nextdoor to the Palisades Fort Inwood the Cloistered unicorns with their shofarhorns their tekiah mourn the fluted frolic the trampledtrommel girl’s face of God the woman in the flushed rush to settle in the train the car the box beaten undercrushed footwomen with her Gaugouged girlribs jutting from skin as if fingers with no skin with no nails no more of this graven this craven imagine these by the book violations of the Second Commandment the synagogue’s Decalogue after the first but before the portico third I can’t get any sleep don’t want any sleep don’t have anything left to do or else live renegotiate preferential rents the lead poisoning warnings the beep bleep bleat of the battery for the smokedetector cremating the monoxidebox gassed too with the electricity dead the locks disposed here in my room in a Cross the central length my mattress the arms two nighttables endtables endofnightables whatever no names since my last super quit on my arms no superintendent strength in my legs left table moldy with medication Elderpryl Lacrescriptions extending to eighteen years nine days to the day I never refilled never moved thrownout on my righthand table rightable in its deep winter static the fanatisch fuzz of November December heating not working a light dusting of ice the bunny clumps the clods with a will a newspaper’s page all of dust all the fuss I’m revising it hourly in my head hands don’t work frontpage the headline says Dies at age of blank with the Beobachterback side of a leaflet advertising a sale on patio furniture my Last Will & Testament I leave that’s as far as I’ve gotten I leave

When they were born, he was born, and when they came for the born, he went.

my will a legacy my very last given over leave it all to Agnesz from Mexico I married her after Liberation January 1945 back in Cologne Paris Amsterdam London but she died on the boat over in the middle of the Atlantic without middle in the East Ending middle of HERE is London the BBC Home Service capital of Hungary or was it then Czechoslovakia where she was born you don’t know from places the graces of dates all the same to you on the ship over she died of a fever which was the war maybe Hungary or then it was Romanian thrush she said Sárospatak Potok am Bodroch she’d tell me it meant the Muddy Stream the Athens of the Bodrog she’d whisper sub rosa about the mapping of maps but now you access interfacile you mouse over whole surfaces screened as if no one down there mattered existed only for the idea the world exists larger than you and is greater than too the collective concerns of whatever your poor Body & Soul the first film I sat through in America Washington Historyless Heights where I’ll die and no one will know just go over the documentaries mockumentaries the old story here in Washington George the First Heights after every revolution went through knowing every joke and every camp there were as many camps as there were jokes every witz there ever was and we were the punchlines the cast crew editors and authors my Onkel out of work dictating his feuilletons to the floors and the roofs the streets silent no more radios either the junkfunk you couldn’t own a telephonegun no radiovisuals not the Grynszpan I knew who’d worked at my father’s factory where they manufactured no more bicycles either I had a Waffenrad until curfew or 1939 no more out late party cabaret café and cigarette nights into morning liqueur only November and Wahrheit und Truth dayeinu said out of season that Purimask last we dressedup we disguised ourselves as soldiers SA SS who took over the Aryan factory on whose floor we made our last Pesach Passover Passah with the windows closed to the candles and the machinery snuffed the Elijah haNavi who stole our best hidden silver that night of shellshattered eggs O my Kristallarms and my nachtlegs the windows lashed with boiling rocks stoneshuddered the wedding of a hammer groom to the glass at the synagogue though we’d say the Bethaus on the Roonstrasse the Runegasse Temple not a shul the Portuguese esnoga or snoge with its black chandeliers huddledstarved pews I slept in through Amsterdam smashed into shuttered London shipwrecked boatgloating London-town Fagintown bombedout blitzedout Amsterdam’s Waterlooplein the disappeared Houtgracht all of 1946 the year of resurrection I shipped over the Hudson’s Atlantic from Luftkrieged London Big Ben fallen dark the clockfaced Canadians who liberated Amsterdam under the command of General Walter Cronkite (ret.) the king of the city of Spinoza but three hundred years too late for him in a century eternally late for any moustachioed ethica anything ordine geometrico demonstrata that was the structure of Auschwitz too the system the ordering Seder a concentration camp you might’ve heard of it from camps from camp after camp after every witz there ever was crossing the border with Canada burning to Rotterdamsterdamned Antwerp the Scheveningen dunes the Netherlandish moon the seachannel changechannel the lines at the JCC headquartered at 18 Johannes Vermeerstraat the Rembrandt eyes of that hollowed rabbi that Hungarian Hasid who’d married us it was Purgatorio I memorized at the Realgymnasium one canto but a generation short of the numerus clausus e canterò di quel secondo regno dove l’umano spirito si purga e di salire al ciel diventa degno lived down a job editing the personal ads in the Aufbau was how my cousin Eva had met my searching for friends for the nuclear core the De Wallen whore who’d hailed from under the last wall in Ukraine who’d witnessed our nuptials performed by that Satmar or Munkács ben Surly Yisroel the coupling the centralization the Reichsvertretung to the Reichsvereinigung was how it began with the chuppah cloudpelts of the Polaklaan pelicans of summer November Agnesz’s niece with the Rosse Buurt on her cheeks the Jodenbreestraat red of van Rijn that had run in the streets she rubbed in for rouge to cross herself over the border canals are just fancy gutters the ash of London the wet smoke of the Dickensian chimneys the artful dodging duikers the Sobibor arrivals waiting to bathe clean with Heraclitus in the Amstel my legacy to be an orphan and step twice to question getting into a whispering argument with a neighbor asked how was he a convert this mensch you were under the impression that he was your brother to loan him the money or keep it with him how he knows how to deal and with whom to talk to these people the Alliance Quelle des Heils Hitler you walked not in the street but tight up against the buildings the walls the falling Gesetze the landlord his name was the Arisator was the term the murm rein arisches Geschäft that the NSBO Nun sind die Bonzen oben DAFka we survived in this yellow house Haarlem we had thirtysix rooms enough for my family or half the Gestapo they said I couldn’t come back to school even to return my books the Heine monograph I’d borrowed from Professor Springer im Rhein im schönen Strome da spiegelt sich in den Well’n mit seinem grossen Dome das grosse heilige Köln they call it a brownstone but its windows are black all ten windows or one blacked with nine others smashed shuttered and one door everyone mistakes for a window boardedup condemned no one knocks anymore their Aufmachen they only throw pebbles the treeplanter fishbowling gravel their asphalt and shatter shatter shatter like Ecclesiastes said in the name of Kohelet that’s all these people know how to shudder the tzedakah kids from the United Way for the Save the Chicago Bears Foundation don’t come by neither does Klemperer or the rabbi from the Roonstrasse the Goongasse shul with its three portico gables burning one for me for my father burnt and muttering Rotterdamnit even the Asian post and that Dummkopf at Piccadilly with too many names Herr Krankenbehandler no longer a doctor Herr Rechtskonsulenten no longer a lawyer though he made a fortune dealing in visas berths and aufnorden births certifying for any country not Poland he’d deliver the papers in brownshirtpaper packages and cluck with tongue at his teeth as if terrorist ticking cousin Eva bombedout blastedaway into a Wanda on the passport raft a boatperson a shipped prowperson displaced she’d been Leviathaned out early from Cologne to Colonia am New Jersey must be dead by now long buried down by the side of the Parkway alongside the Indians or Canada the goldmine quarry coal coffee and cocoa shortages Mondays home idle with the French tutor’s Polish breasts and her clitoris I thought resembled Pope Rassenschande I would’ve studied hygienic phrenology at the Law Faculty sigillum facultatum utriusque juris studii coloniensis if not for Nuremberg Nürnberg barely passed the skullshaping nosesloping eyeslanting test for Gymnasium the artfremd Abitur abattoir I had slaughtered alien friends of my own with whom I’d play tennis and girlfriend one of them her family knew the Oppenheims had a cottage at Cuxhaven the Prisengracht at Westermarkt where we’d kissed her father had a moustache as if to spite the fleck of another dictator it was such a Franz-Josef you wanted to shove a school’s ruler up his Zwaneburgwal then wipe the floor with him but they had a maid for that friends with ours was Dorota who spoke Polish parle vous how far would she let me get today the Sonder peddling his who knew if they were his sons those jewels dug from anuses you could still smell and taste the dreck the shit of the Visserplein fleas taking an afternoon nap in the Church of Moses and Aron Aharon my second name the first of my neighbor nextdoor they’d put on a Kindertransport for Leeds leaving his sister behind twisted by polio my medicine spoon my candle burntup because they’ve turned the electricity off and refused utilities assistance HUD to sell out to them 203(k) and so better to havdalah the spices the kiddush bramble burnt larger and melting length onto its end forever until the wax it’s one great huge yellow white consumptive catarrh a canker this eyesore this lipsore lifesore this house as blackbrownyellow as a tooth I own the paper’s stuffed into this pillow I stole Kissenklau Zissenklau didn’t realize I stole it from the Presbyterians Columbia Medical Center but to return it means to explain myself to the old doctors ever yarmulked Pakistani Indian younger and that won’t do must repent the week in London with Agnesz fighting the Buckingham Fuckingham tourism hordes the whore the whorewife rebbetzin those Mexican Hungarian refugees speaking a Yiddish IIc I didn’t without any messages no letters or rent only welfare notices slipped under my door my windows smashattered evicted the radio off the air unplugged the telephone dead too the kilos of copper and brass to remit save your breath saving wire hold the line Operator I can’t hear I’m as deaf as a lung from the sirens the air raids the Ets Chaim Kapo I recognized on the Rapenburgerstraat at parachute dawn but there’s none anymore droppingin no photo sessions or latenite appearances with the television over too many bill summaries no credit left no more fêtes roasts of tributes might I propose a toast a savrei this prosit l’chaim to Ed McMann if he’s still alive and if so where’s my big check the gemoney the jewelgelt not here not yet will it clear drawn on today’s pants yesterday’s pants every day’s the hallway’s leg maybe the buzzer’s dead too no more innerview interview requests nothing to turn down like this bed I don’t anymore no one knew no one remembered there’s nothing at all to deny

When they were young, he was young, and when they came for the young, he went.

Liberation was the midnight middlestair hush of January 1945 it was JanI remember it better than the birth of no children my all of no kinder it’s said how the Soviets were teenagers the Red Army’s Ukrainian front their 322nd Infantry it was Agnesz couldn’t believe they had so many of them you joked what’s wrong you asked with maybe the 321st the rifles of Kursk and the Carnival birthday parade pomp Weimarhuge and grander Whymore the many happy returns of the Bug Army the 6th Corps when my cousin Franz came back from the War the first World One with medals made of laundrysoap coffee cocoa and tea a hero with the reserve divisions the Conta Corps Beskides Corps echt Germans under the command of Marshal Koniev though by then I was already summering far away from you on a march out to Loslau Agnesz if you know it outside the fence beyond the electricless chainlink they put up around the backyard lot blown through with fastfood cartons and bags will that be paper or plastic Gristedes the God of the Greeks of Homer and Pseudo-trismegistus Marx the burgerboxes and Kennedy tubs of friedchicken my brittle skin my Torahskin the parchment flaking the house the burnt corpse-brick and the hoofdrum hymn I’ll have the supersized Spanish goatloin the dogs Prinz the cheap Presbytesized meat barking the Paris radio from which we first heard wind of the Faust of Gounod with the strings and the winds and the news from the west of Berlin the static and crackle of Chancellortalk the boycott of vom Rath the secretary my father’s für Elise he had to let go with the books she kept for her son those ledgers illustrated with pictures of dragons and Ostmark dragoons atop the horses of Karl May and in the spaceships of Kurd Laßwitz those giant pigs octopi and the gigantic lesbian Teppichfresser Kraken Kranken Seuchengefahr because nu as they say assistedliving isn’t living anymore just press the button and the Russians come in on horseback with sirens the exhaustflagged ambulette driven by illegal Ukrainians and inhome help they call it is a stranger’s home you pay rent on to die in crematoria blasts through the night not torching flesh but the structures themselves lungs kidneys and liver I bought outright this building the paper’s right here the blatt the leafy daf stuffed into this pillow I stole from Columbus Marrano Medical the last time I was sick was decades ago has their postmark stamp their tattoo on its case I had croup cough pneumonia Durchfall too the stain of how the hospital saved me Blocks 20 21 28 blocked again lately but all they gave me was aspirin charcoal tablets and scabies the women who died for the gynecologist Clauberg in Block 10 20 21 shrieking the same to the ear as the boom of the tanks in bloom and the infantry howitzer mortars it’s too schädling schande embarrassing to return it to which clinic blocks away too weak to walk not enough shellstrong exoroach for the mamzer Presbyterians their doctors always Mengele younger and younger their faces Asian Indian Pakistandoffish my face falling to puddle its age on the floor on the winter earth you wanted to just kneeldown and kiss it you needed to hug them the soldiers then rip their medal hearts from their chests dripping to the floor that’s her ceiling to stain the Virgin Marryme Puerto Dominican girl’s sheets her boyfriend’s a dealer on the Appellplatz the dellplatz the hellplatz a plotzing horseflag hung over the horizon the Blutbanner burn of Oma’s Walter Scott the son of Hermann und Dorothea we traded German quotations with the officers’ moustaches red and black and laughing so much younger than me who was even younger than them more starved too diseased marching due west through the Russian Ukrainians the 322nd hour that at last was our address our heightweightnumber no more of these recreations redactions reinterpretations reinventions revisions revised and revisionary all of these storied stories untold and yet told wasted breath bombedaway tired Köln Deutz-tired traintired shiptired the haunt and stalk of the 1st Ukrainian front was tired Major General his name was Brooklyn Yashechkin Grishaev with the wineskin stomach the water we drank too fast to swell the last gram of bread drambread bloodcolored like jam the last leaven Liberationthirsty Liberation-hungry liberté égalité fratricide mounted bareback on Stalinback saddled with night if it’s night and how would Birkenau know Brzezinka Ostland lost-land cost to benefit ratio the racinate poliofairies and the gypsyrades with their reincarnated cutraterapethethroat FKL survivoresses the blokowa kurva cures wandering around offering their syphilis up to the horses the whorses the worst of them the versteppung vershtupping Ukrainians no better than the Poles save they’re saviors the Musclemen the Musclessmen the boneless chickenfingered men the Moslemen the only good Muslims that’s how bad Iran without blood without claim we brought with us our suitcases thirty fifty kilos I weighed what fifteen twenty skinwrapped skintrunked shrunken and marked chalked pulverized bone no more images imaginings no more stories tattooed on my lips in a milk that was ink the winter spent at the foot of Mont Blanc while my father did business I sat in Dorota’s lap fireside sucking the nib of a fountainpen after supper I wandered Chamonix the blank ice fields and the snowedover tenniscourts the hotel’s library with its foreign words taking their ink on my tongue like my father’s ashes the cold blue of a suckling kid the Shema O Izrael the Satmar said Hear how my son’s dead alvás in Hungarian in the arms of the Russian Ukrainians they said the Kaddish the emes mamash gevaltalk the whinnying neighs of the horses arrived they wouldn’t even approach that’s how disgusting we stank the saltlick the sugarlumps of our pimples and pocks and bubonic breasts our cysts and our boils the Tableaux Vivants set in Egypt and Palestine among the Caucuses or Carpathians that were so faraway and pretty onstage at the theater the hillhumps of the horsecamels arrived and arriving the droms flying their earflags their tailflags and the manes of the Russians whom we called The Russians but were actually Coney Island Brooklyn Ukrainians just born into the culture the Wissenschaft of it all the tums and the glooms glom the dead gathering up like a widow the sheaves of my women Dorota and Agnesz Doris the Kultur and Bildung of lading the massing my father installed on the executive board of the Rhenish-Westphalia Verband the Reichsverband onboard the trains the boats the executive planes you forget the strength of the horse the hoofhod power the gallop and trot the barrowbacked Spanish get my goat what a language I had none of that Babel the mauscheln the rabble ratalk the Yiddish Yissish the Hebrew Ivrit the High Slavimaic despite being Auschwitz and Uptown I’m a city person a Yecca a Piefke as they said in Dachau our Sabbath was Sunday with organ and Rindfleisch a German a Goyman like Berlin as much as Vienna a man of the auto not the ass or the Russian I’ve had frankfurters in Hamburg and hamburgers in Frankfurt Français and Yiddish I had to learn Hebrew here in a night class CUNY studying the desertalk also sprach the Urlock after I learned this language say Shakespeare in Kraus’ translation Queens College tutored by a kruller a Kraut with a cup of coffee served atop Chaucer then over lunch would do Talmud a bissele Wissele tick on my own later with a greenhorn in greenjeans a Pollack I bought pastrami for corned-beef with a side of pickle you get it mthafcka you understand that I knew nothing of this Appellwaiting dizzy without roll or furl of schedule the Ordnung the vertiginous Seder this grubby grubber gribnes schmaltz only refinement luxury Jesus we owned a Rubens or was it a Rembrandt a Vermerely it was natural I played the violin on the roof of the piano and took Latin to Greece Kaffeeklatsches mit Kuchen a Bechstein with original bench an imitation Duiffopruggar we owned a first edition of Goethe’s Die Wahlverwandtschaften kept under glass a snoglobe alongside the traintracks laced under and around the trunk of our Weihnukkabaum we had one of those tinseled too the spring day Fascism began to be spelled with an sch and our Führer won his election even among the voters of the camps as vast as the house six floors high we had dying in here locked in here I can’t don’t remember won’t whoever locked me in maybe myself serves me right Links the instructions the onlyfollowingorders the ordure only the ordersfollowingorders appeals with the lawyers young everyone’s yarmulked younger they don’t know from old workmanship Louis Quatorze was what we had over there L’État c’est moi it’s said the Empire desk a door up on new condo construction sawhorses the kit shelves and the bed just a barracks mattress a kippah on wheels hauled to my room that rents as a studio the brownstone’s black dead middle freezing no windows open only shattered hung with shutters in shards in triangles and stars over Manhattan forgotten on high I’m going going soon to be gone the ball outta the park like they do in the Bronx Uptown the B Train to 145th Street a few Blocks 7away from where I fled to get back to the ghetto never born into London Amsterdam Cologne Coloniabandoned no more of that muddyweed muster the Appell’s core barren eve of Christ’s night into morning this morning Christ’s birthday mine too Shabbos the Sabbath with the ecumenical presents the roaches and rats bowed and candled eight of them so refined so natürlich gemütlicker mein Arsch a bicycle marionette an edition of the Fables of Lessing one year then the next a little book of letters on Arab numismatics by this Reiske whose birthday I shared a luxurious exchange a pursuit of ideas of ideals the always omnilingual chatter of cultured bankers brokers the booms and blasts of their battleship wives the only men among us Mustermenn Clustermen the tumultuous crowd rankling rankless and rowless unnamed and unnumbered the fencefaced barbtoothed and bowlmouthed we owned a flush toilet all two of them one for each kissing cheek the burble of the Rhine the bubbling Rhein Vorder and Hinter the Rijn the Lake Constance summers at Basel I mean the Loregoddamnedlei I survived was in theater and the theater of politics who was the cousin who knew Brecht to survive to the end to mourn Heideggerian I knew a Marion Heidegger once for a hopeful for the Paris Opera mezzo soprano this fall into trapdoor nothingness the void through a blackhole a blankhole checked a crack in the square the Appell unmoved on Onkel D’s chessboard scattered with orangerinds the citrusblind hallways stalked a mustardseed horseradishthirst my sheetskin fittedskinflat shroudskin the moustacheguns and a tip of the cap to salute the redstar the gelb the goldbars and teethdisease the pure evil’s the word Jenseits von Gut und Böse I knew from my father’s incomplete set of the Gesammelte Werke the death of more than me you don’t have to be a prophet to know this coming Christmass mistmass perhaps a week away we hoped a Hungarian Shabbos a Szombat from New Year’s or more was the report the forecast Rotfront the eastweather the eastworn eastworm drab beastweather the uniformed horses like camels in caravan their heads as if the busts of Isaiah and Jeremiah and Tucholsky All soldiers are murderers of course save those who saved me the only thing only person left lined behind for the listing as Exhibit A on an attachment numbered numinous rollcalled the etroghand shaking St. Vitus dance the Simchat Hora on it to contract anyone’s future have D’Amato & Leib give it the onceover the twiceshy cousins their names the same as their cats Tutankhamun papyri the Oppenheim Familienleben paintings the Bilder the Bibles not the Torah or Tanach the law of the Rechtswissenschaftliche Fakultät I would’ve had for insurance to ingather the fees postdue rent violations lying on this feather Gesundheit this weather my father’s barometer a gift of the Baron van or von Wahrheit tarnight trutheight the treepitch waiting the wasting expectation of birthday morning with Christ the thricewise firmament of presents not for the Hasid’s dead son’s bris or circumcision but a Hollekreisch kindled anew lamp desk a bathingsuitcamera pomegranate my wishes Purimoney and books the Halt and the Inhalt of the illuminated Haggadah from which we sang the Bund or Chalutzim tunes to the music of municipal sculpture the riders of the Red Army parting the frozen Reed Sea of the Vistula painted red with our blood to scatter to pass through the fires what tribes of us left

When they were, he was, and when they came, he went.

not the Rukrainians thankless their saving us up for the gulag forget the forest from the trees the Americans either for all their chaw and Wriggley chicle chewing gum their deciding slow vodka tongues waiting around talking too much to the scopes over the tracks kill me now it’s the irony the sarcastic laughter through it all that’s kept me alive even if to laugh means jaw hinge hurt the mind explodes like a deskbomb a chairbomb an Attentat assassinating Bonhöffing Molotovgong the divedrop of old jokes returning in images in words these scraps of ragging witzs not setups no that what’s killing me isn’t example Auschwitz Auswitz einwitz the gang’s all that dopdoppdoppel hardlabor slavery the ovens gas gun to temple stumblingBlocks 10 and 11 trigger tripped on licemines the typhus tuberculosis malnutrition starvation the camp Himmler’s willing golems the Musselmänner the only good kind of Muslims we pitied them as hopelessly as Iran does its dogs in their throatlung gutplunge think she’s dead she must have been Eichmann said die the SS-WVHA said work will set you protected the whole suzerain claim the blame the nonsense began with the shylock stock the Bishop’s coin the imperial fief liege and the lives of the Dom’s incarnations the Privilege and pogroms of Rupert of Deutz the Abbot Caesar of Heisterbach and the rabbinic disputations of cardinals and Innocent III not beholden to the servus of services due to the charter of Birkenau of Auschwitz II the Arbeiter sequel it was a year there an everlasting Purgatorio translation because once I spoke every language ever spoken the German the fauxGerman the nearGerman the campGerman the diggingDeutsch the quarrysprache we organized the pebbles into gravel into gravelly details the piles of hair and pounds of heads from Birkenau to Buna and so were allowed to travel between camps to tourist vacation summering in Auschwitz I the winter of Brzezinka Oświęcim Osphitzin and Monowitz Duowitz what have you initials the acronyms and their who knew anonymous sins the IG Farben SWirtschafts — Verwaltungshauptamt between lesser and greater embodiments of supreme evil though not in the sense of beverage and burger sizes the Mc-Donald’s that’s just opened on the crack corner at the crank of the elbow the shoulder joint the haunch lunch but in the loss of sense the Guldenstarred arches eclipsing the moon one hundred ninetytwo million teeth placed under the tongue of St. James the hated sicut and the Notita de Precariis the abyss of the Abbesses their abscesses sunken ponds the pitted puddles of ritual weather Messe the Trade Fair Grounds turned Appellplatz mound the roundedup of Cologne to you we’d been there since ever before the goyim the German barbarian tribes they’re called Nemesis we’d come with the Romans not my family my people and yet there we were punctually at five in the morning stripped shaved striped and unfed the drought purged by the bloodflood of Plague salved Regina with a rash of denarii and solidi placed atop the eyes of St. Martin soothsayed of St. Gereon martyred in Cologne split in two cleaved we were butchered sundered in quartered half like the Apostles’ Church Anno II the relics of money being cigarettes shoes and political food the Hamshamed Shemname of Hashem and the Marx brotherly in Apollo God of the Great Shavuot 1096 despite gifting five hundred marks of silver mercury poison to Godfrey of chicken Bouillon king of the Judas Crusades and Jerusalem’s towers the watchtower guardhouse dogpowered wires like electrical eels rays the octopus strangle of Worms the Masada of Neuss and the taking of Xanten Would that my head were water and Bitterly they weep Babylon by the sides of the nightgraves of the knightslaves buried in black chainmail made of the spirochetes of an infinite hundred infections what I’ve known from not imagined or sawheardsmelledtasted I touched its dissemination of ideaknowledge the roadmud streetflume leading east of Exile’s Eden galutways to peasantry and slaughter little puff maggots wound around the spine rumors of Doris my first wife I called her but we never married in Polish my girlfriend ladyfriend woman the tightfisted wave the futile hurl of messages thrownup from the stomach over the perimeter fence the fourteenth century fifteenth expulsion of ticks from the forearm hairs diggingin under the pastry the noodelskin strudelskin worms through the joints through the temples like apples parasitic destruction death from within the Würfel Gate for the accommodation of every Walram indulgence the concives a citizenless boundaryworld bridge-state sealed with a promise made anew each year every year and wrought in gold marble upon the face of the Dom from age from outliving my years allotted that year outdistancing deathmarching the Carnival Crusade route the trommeltrample todesfooted in ragged step a faltering woundown step behind the freezing sun the lopped off head of the Polish step world the yellow gelbglory the jaundiced eyes shut or opened the same ding hüpfen rollen laufen drehen which should I do first or secondguess the Kommandos keep away from the sex clefts of the peaches the plums I organized apples tangledup in the barbs the rosebushes hedging the lawn of Villa Höß we called the flagged thorn wilting between my legs lying without sons or daughters but with Klein it was Kline who’d bunked next to me who’d had his eyelids sliced from his pupils for a lesser offense red and white he shrieked that he saw like the flag the same sun setting over risen Japan the Nippon gramweight of bread and the souplessness lame without bowl the cup of the palm gypsyread gypsydead with a smile wink and a violin played in sympathy upon a hair of the head of the Lagerapportführer the arm shank stroh the leg fear of God the Kapo afraid of me whom a later Kapo preferred Meister Bruningus the Bishop Hochmeister to scheme royally that entire autonomy scam the massgrave of the Greve buried with its gold bullion unter Goldschmied the ghetto Anno who knows if they even had keys to the locks for solitary confinement Emancipation came with the Morgensprache the owed ad æternam hereditary tax the protection and tolls the pledge hedged the dictus the dicta usurious and all of that dissembling Latin I knew all Greek to me its assimilation by fire the Jerusalemgässchen’s smoke the stove forever unlit in the barracks brickBlocks their tricklocks when you had to shit or rape or kill alone to warm the shoulder spine the barrack bed the spindle of the body’s Torah armspindle arm-needle harmthread the finial swindle swung with a rope to hang the thief from the rafters stolen away after lineup and linedown and right left and Recht Links to the wall with hats off to the elect of Westphalia may all of Mitteleuropa’s good writers and painters and sculptors and musicians and poets say rape all of your daughters eternally in fiery heaven the furthest Nebenlager of the Final Solution the Endlösung endlessly sung the nusach wind-whistle trop of the rollcall the rollstall the count recounted discounted then counted again separate the consonants from the vowels separate the oes from the cnsnnts then the ooas from the vwls loading the unloading then loading again the Krankemann Krankyman the kook krook what’s your name take one what’s your number soundoffandon the screech of the genital nails the forged mails we received Ich bin gesund and what’s worse it’s the silence you get to the end the sum of the days and there’s this survival this instinct inculcated cult of us to have come back resurrected incarnated alive if this you call living or soup or herb this turnip radish bearfat catfat with water lukewarm buttonsoup collarsoup goop and a sliver salami the marble of mud the endless slats the bunkmatewake kapowake the alarms the Schadenfraids only to return to this building owned outright this plot of one room but no wife Doris I met in PoŁódź Karl von Litzmannstadt in the ghetto the Goethe meadow I’d recite to Agnesz from Mexico whose father died either in the Stehzelle Hungary or from flogging the disease that was Grabner when she died on the boat her corpse was kept cold in an overboard lifeboat so as not to infect fellow passengers or the captain’s decision to lower her tossed to the waves for the Leviafinned sharks that circle the bedroom livingroom familyroom den of all rooms in the middle of this house the pitted Pharaoh’s tomb brownstoned blackrocked walls an Uptown pyramid Corfu’s deportation that goaded load took a month the Hungarian moon over Reich and raum and when the Egyptians finally arrived at Auschwitz everybody was already Tod dead to the Zugang the chaingang the gained slain world the love of my Birkenau Mutter whom last I saw would’ve whispered into my father’s ear slicedoff severed and served to a dog or a God what a waste of a perfectly good train she was funny the marksmoney the Marxmoney the Trostky-Braunstein brownstone money the rent I’m owed the partydues paid in news and cigarettes only butts how much they must have saved in Zyklon Before the rest of the house is rented out to whomever Esq. collects the Vorgänger foreganger planked across the pit Moll and I dug a hole for ourselves then filled then dug again shovelfaced and spadehanded soon enough there’ll be none of us left to mean or machine the tithe the testimonial urge to make statement to Macht after me who’s next no one’s blessed the Gypsy’s empty palm the strong outstretched firsthand only heresy hearsay this pun language this funlanaguage loopholed and nooseheld in the mouth just ask D’Amato & Leib and their John Kestenbaum Esq. that polite young associate they have working for them gave me that businesscard of his with on the back his homenumber his cell who remembered me he never forgot it’s an honor and horror forgetting this failure the terrible gravesump stumpump the corpses watery slack the Body Tax the fined levied on breathing too freely the face dripped leaky faucet moan Puerto Dominican Doris who couldn’t have children then died into smoke on the Jerusalemgässchen had lived down the street around the Block10 of the corner Berlin from a friend of a friend of my father’s but not until Poland did we try sowing piglets I fed in the pen the watered zoo Höß kept fenced behind the Vartegau the Varterslaughter for deprivation experiments the phenol sensorial with the veins and syringe the dripdrop of noma and soma normal and healthy it was inquiry it was science how little to sleep how little to eat what work and medicine might be withstood without arms without legs feetand-hand shrunken tribal head on a wick of a neck reduced again rereduced useless inutile no estate leave the world nothing that won’t go to the grave just as I came into it a month too late for the bullets except for this blackened brown spoon of a house as large as Höß’s I leave for the lawyers larger even than the rats the roaches their Plagued Napoleon’s defeat and the Infamous Decree called to convene the Landtag to the credit of all Consistory the free years the Friday Freitag years we had no clocks we had no calendars we were turned into calendars and turned into clocks the workdetail I met my cousin’s brother which one of the ten also cousins who fought my Onkel in the First War and was a hero though he’d converted by then and had married an Engels no relation the rollcall the callroll and hatsonoffhats the caps we had to wear the Weltsch who said famously Tragt ihn mit Stolz den gelben Fleck the beard-fleck the badgefleck he took with him with sumptuary pride to London where he survived Jerusalem under the sign of the uniform star the sky robed with fighterplane stripes but why we still had to wear the fuckfleck in Auschwitz I didn’t understand they would know me ununiformed they’d know me naked with race and underwear purity laws the rainbow of gates their Arbeit Macht you mad insane metal of allowanced indulgences we paid indigent for through the noses they hated for not hooking a word out of our mouths save ja wohl no relatives ja not smoke and wohl air paying the wind for the safe conduct of ash a passage communal no one to care cousin Eva dead and Ruth and Nathan of Gaza the warhero too though perhaps he wasn’t even a cousin managed to make it to Israel to Palestine the Altneuland Aliyah survived my Onkel only to make instead of the New York trade the Exodus for a length of rope a moment of grope with a razor and tub nightly rollcalled the uncalled for again from the beginning to die properly back in which decade’s war for a nation a people and not for let’s say pneumonia the Titus of typhus favus Fritzsch and Feist you don’t know the difference between America’s America they say as dead as St. Severin this weakness like Samson or Samuelson I have for confusion confounding naysaying it straight from the bowels of Babel the politruk polka in bloodwatercolor just ask Schmauser or Kramer who replaced Hartjenstein in exchange for the suicide tempt as it’s said the assimilationist tendencies from ash into air into academics and stories inventions the deconstructivist dated that’s what we do we reinvent we redact every story each and every storied second season bedded down in the ground in the air in the pale of the Himmelhow sky there’s nowhere else to die nohow to sleep and yet why

When they were old, he was old, and when they came for the old, he went.

the August Assumption the feasted festive arrival with the Peterite dogs the preterite lights up from the heartvoid the hearthvoid and the famine drought and disease the dizzying vertigo’s luck the guttersuck the Selektion Doris one way the other from Łódź then Lodsch loading unŁódźing years ago one hundred eight I am Harlemwide Mourningside bedbound chained to the pillow-cuffs the boxcar bedcar trackbed trundlepassover Poland the protectorate rectorate the rectum of the world the anus mundi the hot heinous hundmund I’m freezing alone here exposed by ignorance inattention the names are the first things you notice besides the noise the glareblare the clash the orchestral swillswirl the clarinet twirl and the trumpet presenting its bell to the same sun over Cologne Köln-Deutz Łódź our evacuation they called it Verlagerung after rung an angel’s ladder the traintracks to Auschwitz from which as they say in America’s America no one returned with their eyes or their lives from the unpent doors of Poland’s partition halfnaked in half an overcoat and shivering warm we were overflowed into the Appell with the chimneys of Birkenau high in the distance burbling brown schnapps and black tea for two lines the Sonder triangulating the yellow and pinkred the milites Christi their dogs with their guntongues barking gums at the sunset stilled in the spotlight the klieg and the clarinet waft and the cello’s low chords sforzando the music of painting a Boschmess the Boschbabel of rabbis rebbeim aged with their beards shorn curling the curves of the old Via Egnatia routed on another train yet another same freight rollingstock from Auschwitz and before Auschwitz in from Łódź going west to go east going east to go west by south sacking weddings brises barmitzvahs shivas along the route the rootway the day storming nights the leaps from the tower burning the Crusader pillage the Calvary charge the poisoned wells quelle the bells of who knows which canonical hour the coming of compline in claps beaten to sacks for the heads of hanged children impaled upon the Holy Lance of Peter Bartholomew the death of the Charlemagnetrain at the Antioch stop the third city of the world the penultimate station of our borne cross bent to wriggle worm the snakecharming trance harm at Xanten and Meer north of Neuss and the saving grace of Abbot Bernard the succor of Joel ben Isaac haLevi the Rabbi of Mainz the anonymous Kalonymos Would that my head toll the trainrang the hydraulick and huffapuff the triangle clang and the cymbals the tongue’s crowded clutter Mutter pushed to one side pulled with my father out to the other split sundered the distance between cleaves Wevelinghoven and Geldern the Cleves border between Kerpen and Kempen the Ninth of Av it wasn’t but there was blood enough in the Rhinerein amidst the Rhinefine Zeitime air the silver river flow of Constantine’s sword Damocles’ be damned by the goring of pregnant women the coring of babies never had any myself because Eva by Agnesz I couldn’t have been married for only a month of a morning with rings only locks of new hair hers or mine packedtight pricked to shiver in that heat already halfway to death in that roil my glasses shattered losing them saved my life could see clear to the gates of iron and gold wasn’t blind to the retrogression the regressionre Doris stroking my hair and the hair of my face before it was shaved I was blond an echt Aryan though grayed white bald the train-plain the floodlain the rippedopen windowless slatlife the boardview and the cupped seek bowed to the wood the rot the piled high of Gypsies dead in the corner we killed who killed us and Edelmann Adelmann Tadel the chugalughorseshodslug the canvas crate the palm balm of bathing in piss green mound of corpses rotting quickfast in the heat the bodies of pregnant feti fallen to deaths from castle walls tossed hurled tower vomit at dawn dashed the conquering of the land promised to the Holy Romans beyond the moatmouth the turrets’ teethwire barbed we told jokesongs jokestories sextalk fucktalk and fucked and sexed and recited the alphabet in every language we knew quietly silent my sister dead a month my brother dead a month he was sick and had a cough a pestilent mark my Muttering mother had another fortyeight hours but that’s life I’ve been told at the postoffice grocerystore no tougher than Doris never not by my side in that carspiralswirl the boxwhorl our own world in the corner to squat or die heatstricken from record reciting to each other libretti and the birthdates of painters the Bull the ode and the code the directions to the ring’s diamond my Muttery mother’s stone we whispered and buried like a close cousin in the cemetery in the Mittelalterlicher Friedhof we unburied reburied unreburied under a rock in a park named renamed then sold by Agnesz and I to the American in the green hat for the price of leaving Amsterdam London New York New York amid the sun of a deathdawn Rhineland Reinrind the skinpeel wealrope and the tug of the Muslims on the road to Byzantium after Tiberias fell and Count Emicho of Leiningen came up the Main toward Mexico the country bordering Hungary had counted his dead at Speyer and Worms and Mainz and Cologne summating in Dachau the apotheosis Treblinka or what passed for a pogrom at Kielce our commute the chugmute dare fareless wayed south through Poland the huts and fences and houses the horses and cows and the cowlike horselike lumpenprolesouls the Bauern that bowed to live scarce along the road to Nicæa from Lower Lorraine Volkmar taking the Bohemian road to Hungary the capital of Mexico Gottschalk up the Rhine through Bavarian peasants to me being a Kölnik a Kölsch I should have gone to Israel Palestine promised an Eretz it was the true gem of Westphalia to die like a human in the Crusades with the blood baked into matzah at the gates on the roofs even the libeled gables Coral of Florida Boca Raton would’ve been nice down there near Ponce de Leon’s Fountain of Youth you’d get dysentery from if you can still get the runs in this country this rushhour spewed bloodred bloodbed pisstain shitsheets I can’t contain myself get a Pole over here now that the visas are legion have them clean broom and mop diaper my room for slave wages they loaded us living they unloaded us dead handandlegging our corpses out the halfdead the neardead the cleardead bodies piled by the Jaffa Gate the Dung and that of the Messiah Moshiach Moshiach Moshiach the cemetery to be resurrected becoming defiled desecrated in advance of my father’s arrival one cattlecar cowcar behind roiling box of hot shit and piss and sementov mazeltov shake the hands you have left you’ve survived the ghetto the foursquare boxbare oxspare slaughterhouse shechtloused Holy Shit Sepulchre it’d been an enormous dark blackstone mouthrone with surprises my tongue sucked into every slumped cheek corner drawer piled deep into wardrobed Biedermeier tin toy soldiers their rations the rusty lime rinds lemon orange and pineapple the palms of Antioch at the Gate of the Dog after the sojourn in Armenia under whose fronds Christians first became Christians became goyim expert at the shield and the sword the stab in the backside of tapestries bunched ripped and torn to smile their mess at the wall the Mona Lisa reversed the retrograde sheetmusic piano reduction of Dvořák’s American symphony From the New World its horse-hump traindump rhythms tracking past the Hungarian frontier on into Mexico the domain of King Coloman and the Danube defeat of the threefold incursion after the forcible baptism of the Ratisbon massacre consecrating corpses for Clermont ten days in November Pope Urban II hanged Odo in piñata effigy packed him with nails to swing as a warning from an overpass trestle the Hohenzollernbrücke exploded over the Bosporus to the Dom’s Magi Gottschalk Volkmar the trainyard workhard and whoever’s the taxistani shvartze Robert d’Arbrissel or Picardy Peterthehermit that fisheating loafer and fishy winedrinker with the face of the talking donkey rode arebackedandfoot Hugh and Henry and what’shisname Walter and the trinity of sons of the Count of Zimmern following the goldstar through flood and pestilence drought famine and a meteorshower in from Deutz Land of the Barbarians the beerhall pigs the sows of the Sau at the Chorgestühl of the wine cellar the Weinbar whose owner’s lover knew my cousin Felix or Franz a friend of Rumkowski’s Bumbowski’s Slumhauski’s if anyone was who didn’t survive but wouldn’t charge it to his tab at that café you say coffeeshop Angela’s Diner back on the Humboldtstraße the monk’s reflection in the face of the faience the Turkish waitress I didn’t want to bring home on the tram I’d always lived with my parents until Auschwitz my Stammtisch Begrüssung for your supper the Shalom whispered into my ear by a Kapo at the entrance to Block 26 for the cutting of hair the bathing of skin flayed the brand the tattoo tracks scarred over the quarantine that is the horizon Hannoversche with the SA just going Deus vult that highvoltage Dios mio conquista crazed with their pikes and stakes burning whipped taskmasterace triangles redlettered with country the crosses lashed on their surcoats and swords their lancetrance maces the haste with which they banged out the brains of the Reichsbahn employees with their dawnflickering lanterns like third eyes allseeing noseeing the corner of Jaffa Road and King George where a cousin of mine thrice removed the Afikomen hid the cousins Godfrey Godfrei and Gott im Baldwin shaved me as bald as Fritzfranz king of the Klingelpütz going off to play Passover or a Purim spiel in the park visiting cousins for breakfast a Volksgarten picnic hiding to huddle like rabbits with the tails of foxes gabbais with the eyes of spies the Birkenau chimneyfar chimneylong Saracen fall from the top of the Temple of Solomon Titusdestroyed Hadrian’s Aelia and the Tower of David the citadel-hell with their jihad enough jumps the plummeting tumult weighed down with luggage the steamers and trunks Azazelattached redtrianglethreaded bound and tied with a goatgag the tines sharps the cutlery butlery whatever you need whatever marks you’ve saved up for the stealing the mealing of bone skullbone and brainmush in quo congregati dederunt nostris maximum bellum per totum diem ita ut sanguis illorum per totum templum flueret tandem superatis paganis apprehenderunt nostri masculos et feminas sat in templo et occiderunt quos uoluerunt et quos uoluerunt retinuerunt uiuos is what I remember from the tutor with her breasts the two of them one Latin one Greek and her licorice clitoris Pope Dorota the tense of her thighs her lap fat squatting at the edge of my bed in a room of my own with floors flaming red slat-planks ganged to fall into the passing dark fields and farm and the house on the Appellhofplatz as grand as the synagogues the Temple on the Glockengasse the Offenbachplatz she’d operetta to me with eau de amour Slavic fou on the tip of her tongue about Zakopane Žilina Sillein her Poletales her Slavgoyishefables about the knights in Christ’s armor shining the sunroundtable the slog and slough of the People’s Crusade covered in moondust and fairypixels desert hoofmatted pawpatted down the Appellplatz the Hellplatz the mustering plots of her stories postcardfalse postdated predated par avionlost to family friends in Los Angeles the American West the Red Indian lullabies the cowboys of Karl May who didn’t need to put their cattle in cars my people my kind of people we all used to do this too we’re guilty all guilty al cheyt thumping chests did the circuit Ashamnu the circuitous route Bagadnu to the east One and True overland portage whether the coached road via the Roman way or firstclass on the boat from St. Nicolas’ Bari and on into Dyrrhachium Bala Cynwood Cherry Hill or Yonkers Westchester County with Bohemond entering Byzantium via Central Avenue the eldest son of Robert Guiscard unleashed trained and flownin like parachuted luggage suitcases and trunks heaped with silverpieces and Familienandenken wares dispersed dispelled exiled galuted like the thumb opposable of John the Baptist brought to Maurienne Rome’s Moriana his body the rest of it left in Samaria with his Salomé head installed as an idol at Damascus as a relic a shrine not to be visited but conquered in pilgrimage barefoot but armed made habitus rooted turned hermitage hovel with central heating and Q & A coffee with Elias and Mauss their gifts of lectern time and dais time all of that bimaside convocational speech at schools and synagogues at JCCs and at YMCandHAs churches even the Cathedral in Manhattan of St. John the Divine we’ve been prodded and pushed we’ve been traded retraded untraded detraded around like goods gone bad like wares without care recorded rerecorded we’re being reeducated into ourselves we testified Nurembergfalse to all these auditoriums all those schools and synagogue dinner fundraisers balls and benefits in boxy carlike foursquare catering halls with the parquetfloor still out for dancing the bearpolka the trained sealquadrille the Katzetnik kazatzka the bard of the czardas mazurka the Parademarsch drumajor the brute master of the ceremonial Ring because how do you whether as a committee or one say testify true to all of that relevant work experience skills set to call it to cry it to name is to lie to yeshivas oceans of audiences Atlantics of public rapt tight in our speech to publicschools dayschools nightschools and once even I spoke to the senate the real live one in Washington the Heights of D.C. the New Jerusalem the whitehoused home of President Rumkowski the Presess of the Rat and the roaches a minority AIDS epidemic that’s where we were reborn and not say the Mount of Olives the pits or sloughs of Despond preaching Peter Eremit of Amiens the alms treasurer of Arqa disbursing generous ragehate giving forth light to the Diaspora’s already overlit underventilated rooms hall after utilitarian halls of conferencerooms meetingrooms boardrooms old age home women groups geriatric tzedakah benevolent charities and university lecture halls after hall and all as part of an annual subscription series the serialized telling of the same anthologized story of mine every time It was August 1944 over and over telling again and again memory machines how we’d been piled into the trains the boxes were the cars for the cattle the kith and the kine going south to go north by northeast through every nowhere town or village we couldn’t name as if children kinder as if one thing and only one thing ever happened in their lives to mine and not children or grandchildren and old widowed love new surgical leases on lifetime guaranteed stents and transylplants my old friends and family in the Appellight the primetimeplatz the drivetimerats racing a rush Floridian south to go north the roaches scurry across me like heartscars like stitches medical alerts advanced leakage protection diapers and bedrails and bathroom benches and eighteen hour mastectomy bras cupped with colostomy plates in their skulls and prosthetics fingers frozen one to another webbed the spinneret ice of SSpiders their rapturous captures the turdpellets the Spanishdirectionsforuse goatpills Elderpryl Gelderpryl Sinemet Levodopa sounds like a shtetl in Polyn im Polen is that Yiddish or Hebrew a language that possesses no superlatives rather doubles itself up like a medication regimen has formulas of formulas instructions for parody satire jokes just the setups forgotten which songs we sang early vs. the songs we sang late what jokes were jokes and where sung the silence über alles die Wacht am Rhein the Horst-Wessel-Lied die Fahne Hochdeutsch Roten und Welschen bangen feigen Wichten humming the tantz the rathskellerdance the harp my Mutter once played the Obermayer with that Babylon sound of her breath by the rivers of the Vistula the Wisła this much is clear Oma’s tears she didn’t make it in the ghetto a month before that Radogoszcz tumult when they closed the doors we shrieked when they opened the doors were corpses already bacillusbones resembling the portraits we drew with fingernail on the walls counting turns and the junctions with thumbs taking pulses the veintrack the nervetract narrow ironmarrow of what did they call it Aussiedlung Umsiedlung which embarkation which disembarkation which the first memory station and which the second or lesser which games we played with memorized cards what jokes weren’t jokes and what originals were better translations Ikh ver alt ikh ver alt un der pupik vert mir kalt is that from America or Auschwitz you’ll never know the problem with truth is that whatever you say suddenly is and God proved it with dung in the lungs with a shout with a scream an Isaiah Jeremiah Ezekiel exhortative yell at the first sight of Auschwitz the minor chimneys this prophet cried the first he saw smoke as if not from a moving trainwindow but the nest of a boat and the fire not land but an omen his preaching the shriek of the telephonevision downstairs in the stairwell a drugdeal head peals extensions away Riverdale hills past Scarsdale pale Whitest Plains on which nothing exists outside Moab leave it all to hump the gasmaskcamels the mammalian rats the feral catsandogs moving in with their Amalek slaves the nuclear roaches must think I’m already dead the dread Roberts of Normandy and Flanders at the Gate of Flowers for Herod they’re circling me circumambulating me as if for an encore of Jericho warring Godfrey and Tancred and Raymond of Toulouse scurrying down the summit of Mount Zion with the tails of his horses held between legs sniffing me out sounding a low whistling wind the passage of trains A B and C below me floors underground closing in on my islandbed’s watery walls a slow Torahora around this Manhattanroom a synagogue not a studio shul shtibl a Temple temped on the von Roonstrasse Moonstreeted the Luneroad we called them the Psalms and Hashem the Lord Our Gott im Himmelkommando where my barmitzvah was married off to a Son of the Commandments to observe without benefit of commemorative plaque a socialhall party and jestering badchany band get the strudel off the ketubah I never signed for my one hundred and eight Christmas Carnival birthdayburn candles a thin slice of Zyklonyellow crumbly cake too late for the caterers they baked themselves already gassed then hanged why not starved to a rope’s death a wick with a clutch of antediluvian roaches and rats a private simcha for me coopedup carboxedin trying to die celled and alone yet still breathing this deathbed confession this candlebed blessing the meltingwax face of this brownstone gravestone raintoes the snowindow the fall of the first flake in midsummer the ash or soot on my cheek to my taste on the buds of my lips to speak of the first kiss I ever had from Doris on Zgierska Street ul. Hohensteinerstrasse her cousin informing on us he died in Floridian Israel Tel Aviv Kibbutz Sasa Arad the land that once had been Promised where last I heard on the radio television saw ten years ago on the ten o’clock news nothing’s changed just the frequency the channel those two Gods they’re still Crusading the history right the hell out of each other I had relations there relatives cousins I haven’t loved them since Łódź expecting her every day every night to ring bell a knock at the door ding dong rung the swell of her hips the hug around the nooseneck the spine as thin as a hiss the train a snakepiss slither a puffhuff quiver and we’re whistling off south from northeast through Poland for nighthours for days until we pull into Radegast Litzmannstadt Auschwitz Explicit Itinerarium Hierosolimitanorum the words have no awe for me the nameterms just worms squirming lines of the Law to the left to the right to the last I knew of Doris she was a step pushed out of the car out of our boxed as if the present to a gift and thrown as if a bow into the air rapped with its billowing pillows of smoke she was pulled from my arms and my hands shoved away from my finger into the opposite line

When they were dead, he was dead, and when they came for the dead, he went.

I’ll tell you what I’ll admit if you’ll just listen to me I’m Joseph ben you don’t know me from Adam the last survivor that’s it that’s who I am and that’s that I’m the last survivor of the Holocaust if you know it the Shoahshowbusiness that whole entire complete consumption of fire by fire all Greek to me it was 1939–1945 east your dates the gates of your mouth guard them have to remember to chew the last bread the last sip of water not rain melted snow October the 23rd of November the iciclelick the saltick the rockstomach swallow of stones the ghettohuddle the puddles and the westerly mounds the barbarian wastes sub Ubii and their tribal cannibal canon those redruddy blood-running brothers of Esau and the clay tit cults of Mithras and Isis our Nemesis Jesus it was us maybe two three generations of wandering Wartheland ul. Franciszkaska north up from Franzstrasse south and west through Turkey the future Crusade route in reverse the Bosporus over and up through the Balkans huddled through the mudpuddle pass the flumeRome paganpaved into Gaul home of Gomer the furthest barbarian Bałuty not what’s it been a hundred two hundred years after the Temple came crashing down in Jerusalem D.C. with Solomon dead and Herod too we came enslaved as exiled priests and as merchantraders rabbi heretics and false prophets we settled and lived and died we died European I survived Washington Holocaust Heights I’m one hundred and eight years older or nine and I’m the last living survivor of the Holocaust the last one the last of the dispersal the Exilelot the wheel-ready firetamed life made the newspaper Rozensztajn’s Getotsaytung the whosepapered Kronika the Tageschronik the Neue York Times and the radio’s announcement its songs bullets tin of ear Es geyt a yeke mit a teke a suitcase a bootchase a claptrap clumptrunk unplugged atop the television I’m the last person in the world who owns a radio I think they broadcast only for me the last person too to read the contraband newspaper clippings in Polish who knew to clothe the starved cheese flesh rot the honeypot Chanukah candles turnedover to the Einkunftstelle traded in return for worthless money scrip Rumkies two year old news the surrender of Warsaw the last surviving to read the Times the crossword catechism I used to find in the hallway or slipped under the door by Jesus Angel se hablemos the language of goats to wrap their turds in the shroud of the oldest on record survivor of Auschwitz the Holocaust Europe say the obituary headlines say the footstones he died a she and I’m it says right here now three years nine months two days older than him or her I won what did I win another ration whether the grandprize telemarkedcar or a threeyearninemonthtwoday vacation to hell though the televisionary phone died so long ago a generation to dust at the wall and the only station the radio got back when it worked was the frequency of shrill salsa A Toda Cuba Le Gusta A Toda Buna Hear Oy the government warning the flash-floodwatch hurricane threat will outlive me the last survivor the last victim dead soon enough of the other previous dire after me what fire what final testimony for our people mine Nazis live forever and are always everywhere under every eternal rock in your toilet behind every one of your refrigerator doors to the infinite freezer I’m told cold I’m freezing not for the last but for the first the very Shechyanu a virgin like Doris who never told this to anyone either she died in Birkenauschwitz survived Agnesz she gave out on the boat across the Bosporus of what I didn’t know if she was infectious or not the last one to tell it to silence the mute the wall of the wind no pasarán she used to tell me when I tried to taste her vagina the Passierschein Ressort whether Floridian or an Arizona New Mexico Heaven Olam Habla se the shovels and spades of the gravedigging snoutpigging work detail the Marysinful construction of roads the street ul. Inflancka Gärtnerstrasse to the cemetery the garden of graves paved with brick and coal cinder the legendary legionnaire stoneturning upending of rock to make a mirror dull of Lyons on the leftbank of the Rhine with the blessings of the Emperor Claudius and his clemency the favor of his wife Agrippina born Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium the home of the War Fleet the fastfooted jewelpeak of Lower Gaul all Three of them the Gallic Empire it’s called by the history that destroyed its own soldier camps that ghetto of veterans from the First World War mercenaries come home to grow fat and sons of Bałuty it’d been called a suburb a ghetto and larger absorbed assimilated into the mess the mass the Urlubbed urbhub city-central with us in from Hamburg Frankfurt am Vienna and Prague on the old burial road up from Bonn was once Bonna to Colonia not the one in New Jersey where Eva lived with the tickytacky houses amid that ghettofenced Levitt suburban insanity cramped into flaking stucco buildings a million or so of them to a room or more always they kept coming they keep coming and going the three knocks to use the latrines or the pot or the kettles the push-squat the urnpiles headown facedown a walk past the factory on Mostowski or the Masonic Lodge dodge on the Moorweidenstrasse not half as grand as the synagogue destroyed on ul. Kocuiszko or Izrael Poznaski’s the two of us me and Doris deep in Bundist conversation about the communards and the verse of Rimbaud’s love for Verlaine and the greatest poet of Polish Apollinaire was the name of that student nonsense the young enthusiasm excitement of our adolescent speech the Zionist mishegas narrisch quick as the rein of the rainsnowflakes dancing to Rabbi Fajner’s songs in honor of the Presess’ marriage to that Weinberger whore as lawyerloud as Marysin kibbutzniks their dreams hitchedup to weddingtrains leaving the Aktion behind north to Chełmno in a rush to be home by curfew what we called home the Sperre Agnesz Doris and I would kiss in the settling noise and hug in the settled warmth with our coats any tag left on the ragfloor atop the scrapfloor as our cots as our bed shared together enough room for our knees to root for trufflespace muffleplace I’d never slept with a girl before from Berlin through the whistling humming the tart farts and whispery drafts the hack and tack of the coldcoughs our beginning the foundations the altar of my religion was three floors up in the back with an unwindowed view to the cherry courtyard trash-packed Oppidum Ubiorum the Ara Ubiorum the snowastes mudhastes the wheelfling the arrowslinged from the towers the ratatat yap of the wolfdogs their gurgling hordes machined just beyond the barbedwire walls erected upon our own Egyptian shoulders the whipswish the switch and the taskmastered wish we were there before ever the goyim were the Clementine Christians the Constantine Christians and the Curia years and maybe even a lifespan a lifetime a century sinned before the Emperor even declared that inconstant cult to be the equal of all religions and so exempted its initiates its initiators its priests say from public duties the munera and the Hieri the Archisynagogi a world before Bonn before Bonna the Franks too the Saxons suckling at the teat of the sow of Rome’s warworld the moneymundi Neronian Flavian us in our Babel and Babylon robes the weeping harpy women and children in legioned liege in servitude bound and chained along the chariot-ways back in the Iscariotdays our shaming slum Germania Inferior it was wrought as Suetonius for one tells us in the name of my father at the end of Caesar’s sword at the Rhinepoint the Reintip ranked as Colonia broughtover imported to New Jersey America with all of its lawnornament idols at the ends of its looparound wraparound drives deadending unending the elms the Elmont Places the icerinkydink publicschool system in which she taught the Latin of German alongside the mall with the Indian movierental store the Pakistani carwash across the river washing the Hudson ben the ocean Atlantic just down the Turnpike just off the Garden State Parkways a bissel south past Newark and Elizabeth Woodbridge over Zgierska Street Township Middlesex County country to where Eva my cousin survived lived to die but I never visited her there amid the Metropark hospitals the Walgreens the red whites and blues of the Foodtown the foodgreen mallwall the parkingplot haze of the wireraze with its honking of sirens the L.Z.A. choir voicing the tears of the painter who’d lived he said in Paris but spoke no French Antwerp or Brussels who did portraits in charcoal he wouldn’t burn for my Mutter of me and my Oma whose head became black and swelled with the pride of disease no one could diagnose not even Berlin’s Caspari we bribed until suffused with cancer it began to resemble the week’s rot of that pineapple we’d buy at the market on the Severinstrasse we’d never finish because there’d always be another palm never empty her fruitface grew silver crowns gray rotted mold the money from my Onkel the gambler up late at table over his ersatz coffeemud cigarettes rolled out of the leaves of the Goethe birchoak inveighing in German auf Deutsch against the Poles their Tuwim and Słowacki all of those poems about hummingbirds and flowers how can you call those goyishers writers they’re goyim they’re illiterate roughs toughs he’d never read them from Aragon Breton or Rosenstock Tzara he used to say to us in our room be careful with your horseplay your Morseneigh it’s still a bookshelf even if there aren’t any books on it just my papers my meds and my glasses their prescriptions never updated my toothbrush and teeth Marx and Nietzsche of the moment’s Göttergötzendämmerung the instant’s Good set against Evil’s Dasein designs Entosteter Entwesteter Freud he’d yell at the Poles the Yiddishist moles with their Mendel Schmendel whomever E equals MC squared like a shvartze but what about jazz and surreal Expressionism he’d spit Dadadadadada what it sounds like in Polish or Yiddish they had to yell back at him in German because though they were impoverished peasants Ostlost pissants to him they knew more languages than us they had to it’s always the poor who have to know more and work harder be quicker in whatever language in charge of the mouth department the strike of the hands the reading of palms by the Gypsy encampment the Tzigane her name toothless womanwhoremother foretelling for me but not for Guttmann Futtermann a life so long the pregnant Rom laughed at me my inheritance the Porajmos they call it the Samudaripen biboldó meaning unbaptized by liber or fire left to the gnaw the crowcaw of the Rumkowski rats arrived official in glasses hat tie and cane raised to strike the orphaned king of the roaches the guttermann muttermann his name I metup with him later with the eyes and the frothmouth gothmouth coming through Köln in search of survivors at the foot of the bridge blown all to Hohenzollern hell across the Rhine its ribs floating like drowning snakes the temptation of a woman I thought was a man walking with the branch of an aspenbeechbirchcarob tree in her hand she said she’d found in Czech stumping her way the dumky Rumkie to Paris pracuj powoli over the footbridge slowgoing woodbridge too far over the next Biebowing Aktion a last Ressort courting the paper matter of factory cuts bleeding the kiss of Doris’ lips on my fingertips and the lids of my eyes Give me your children she’d say but she couldn’t bear the work quotas lack of supply the factory hours demand strikes over wages and rations of food and word a loaf for six days for five the lessening weight of the soulbread the souldead forty grams to thirtythree the angry complaint and the rage stealing the thieving Tarnungtalk that latenight rainwatersnowatergossip the recrimination drip of the mouth-leak hate accusation and blame the bitterherbturd snuggled close before the first shifts the aching hands love between the thighs of the Kishinever circus dwarf and the banker from Prague it cost money to love and to live the plenty the fat and the lean cowlike cowering women the protekcja Thirteen the rabbi without wife their twelve bearded daughters whom Doris mothered in lieu of her own an imagined life an imaginary life nursing away at a breast dry thirst-arved wombed beyond the jurisdiction of God the King’s jurisdictation of the Gettoverwaltung with halting tongue the eyes electroshock bulged by yet another rule sensless another regulation meaningless mental meat the soup issue the watery moonless night as black as a screen blank for which I forsook my father and Marlene Dietrich Unrat fit for the Kino row K seat 2 just in time to make the news unreeled over Desutschland gedenkt der gefallenen Helden at the Staatsoper with General von Blomberg addressing in rückhaltlosem Vertrauen zum Führer sehen wir die Saat reifen einen Staat der Einigkeit der Stärke und der Ehre ein Volk in Frieden in einem befriedeten Europa in the loge alongside von Mackensen Göring Hess and Eddie Cantor it was Iskowitz in Kid Millions 1934 35 in icecreams and color after those goosestepping parade marches in gunpowder black and surrendering white all these American visions saddling you with yet another possibility of exile a widest frontier a darker Diaspora galutglut ever deepening selfimposed selfreposed as a limitation stronger than any barbedwalls or barbarous gates of being made rendered like fat stupider idiotic less informed intelligent worse just less curious being remanded to the silent and dumb only wet primordial animals just crawled scrawled themselves out of the Lebensraum they’re now trumpeting like the Levites at Jericho’s Temple selfdenial I mean the wiles of while in the worst possible way missing notes what’s worse skipping with sloppy brush-strokes and imperfect marble verses that don’t scan skim stanzas or addup understood the patience to falter before the grand equations of unread pages hated because they exist because they hate to exist as they are have no value no worth a snowedover snowedupon clearing covered in white a blank page a black & white page strewn with the cursive of corpses Rembrandtstrasse 16 or Schneidergasse Schiller and Goethe to the gas alongside Ventzki the vents and even Rumkowski’s wife the ghetto’s Venus starved far beyond the capacities of even Marienbad or Morszyn Łódź unable to sleep but thirsty for dream Łodzia reduced to the daze that is waking in its own coat torn of arms with the crowns and boat sunk to the bottom of the lowest circling rung hell frozenover the reversion of bells its last days tolled grave excavation that selfexploration self-examination the Aufräumkommando archaeology of bodies charred shot unclaimed without birthright or only that of the Poles the roaches and rats the streets overturned an upheaval the reversed spin of the globe revolting the stenchstanch of anklehigh kneeabout blood the stain of the crotch the collars of priests unto Mengele what’s my lines demarked remarked strata dug beneath the Germans beneath the Romans dug into pagan rebirth a nowhere unfounded on air in the air the smoke rivered Rhineleft Rhinelost at the edge of the barbarian west with the nit grubs lice hair tribes the rootruned ruination of mudhives thatch the love of fire and wheel and sharp fur and the cult of the clan the earthworship the Saxsexed sunlust of the Suebi the Kings of Gallæcia the Galatai descended from Gomer the grandson of Noah the other the enemyother of the westerlybrother the Cain of the holehumping tithumping rapedsisterdaughter grunt mother of the fields the three fallow stars shining upon the bodied ruin of Batavia’s shitpissfleck and maggoty corpserot corpsetrot a clump a clod as over the horizon now comes a whiteness a sheet a man a mensch arrayed in a page he’s led as a slave to his loins for its generations to die here at the north edge of the northernmost fence of the cemetery roadstreetmudfeet trod the chatter of any teeth left serving for the perching of crows on the graves their names it’s these jokes the yolkyokes I remember the hits and the missing witzs meaning not just joshing with humor but the witzs patronymic witz meaning the son of the vichs or the vychs which son of a wich wicz vits or vitz I’ve saved them up in the drawers of my nightstands two that’ll survive me and survive survival a will the humor a testimony we traded traitored hated and loved the last to live to return from last century bearing its gifts its souvenirs a suitcase of tchotchkes the trunks smokedamaged remaindered remanded looted givenup and over away that’s all I stole what’s my sin thieved what they left me with an appreciation of that whole spit image graven in laughs in these ways to get through it all I’ve savedup their jokes understand their cemeterylaughs their prats their blackandbrownstonegigglesandsmiles not their beginnings understand never them never did like them understand we’re the beginnings we’re talking about men and the angels they laugh like women Doris and Agnesz and Eva my cousin out in Colonia dead by the Turnpike the Parkway down at the deadend exit mile numbered zero of ul. Okopowa it’d been called Buchdruckergasse the binding street paging white way the road to the grave the tums of the tombs we’d gather who knows who to remember how to laugh at these punchlines to the face to the gut is the word in America shutting my eyes to the setups they’re called the blackblankness the blindness of night to tomorrow today to sharpen our knifeteeth the faculty the facility of our laughter freezing to remember those late afternoons it must’ve been Shabbos the Sabbath it felt like it at least without work getting done getting it right unfinished laughter half done half leftover these onehundredeight of them I have punchlines they’re called kick-steplines the march through the years its remnants I have one for each year for each language of life we’d stand around talk and gawk joke and rub hands for warmth and butt heads and hearts without horns or barbs without names none of them darker than hope the thing with feathers our wan hope the butterfly stitch the wax wings of mice and the roaches of rats leaving them nothing taking nothing but our century with me overstayedandextended at day rates by night by the hour the soured expiredlongpastdue the rent third floor #3B remember the Second Commandment they owe me six months I’ll give them another loafing or idle to fill the air cold with what breath left in our bodies taking memory with us my ribs hurt to recall all these Łódźlines the bordering Babel ways of the wall gravegriping darkgropes those Linzmannstadtlaughs one hundred eight what they’re called punches and kicks to the groin betrayed by the face of the mouth that we’d trade we’d bait them bated in mud and the puddles of rainreinwater snow to salve the wounds of shitandpissandIdon’tknowhatelse pondy scars these hahas these mars funnies I’m left with I’m leaving all I’ve ever been born for and against what I’ve borne witness false for and coveted the foretold you heard it here first folks my famous last words lying swaddled a newborn Wort clothed but still cold there’s no heat here only a spoon only a candle because the electricity future I’ll tell you despite any sophistry sophistication that suit and tie business the cafédämmerung Commerz the Yecca airs I’m their heir I’m a nostalgist at heart I like the down I love the troddenupon all that spitonandovertheshoulder I’m sentimental my birthday being Christmas this Sabbath Shabbos indulgence before the three stars blink dewy weteyed not for what I’ve lost understand what I’ve never had is what’s forgotten was denied me and wasted I can’t drop it my pants the same madras pair can’t let go of my body and breathe lungs and rib to keep myself in memory like a Venetian overcoat of my father’s robbed or lost surplus let go on sale for next to nothing no more discussions no more discursions excurses exegesis eisegese didn’t one Ecclesiastic or another once gloss there’s nothing new under the sun the moon the twin Pole-poles within the fences the walls the barbed boundaryround laughlines of Łódź there’s nothing left for me Joseph ben my father you didn’t know him don’t worry or apologize to God forbid lie to believe in Him the women I’ve loved and the men who’ve made me smile as wide as a grave the gape of the void bottomed with a humorless corpse to not know from guilt is to be either guilty or dead no more the setups the buildup eternal construction of the cemeteryroad this cementerystreet flooded flumeline straight to the heart of the issue toward the soul of the mattering womb yuk it up to remember what I want to what I need to what I choose what has been chosen for me in quotation» auserwählt «marked say by Hitler I don’t even know her these punchlines these payoffandons these zingers and dingringers of bells the bleeding heart of the mouth that’s what I have that’s what I recall they come back to me now as I’m dying this whispering hiss I’m this dying moment forsaking me for a laugh these one hundred and eight of them lines but who’s counting

one I pray in the other I’ll never step foot in you know business is business but if I should die before the debt’s paid that’s just my good luck I gave at the office I make a nice living hymn if all of you are here then who’s minding the store whatsa matter you kids never seen a Yenkee before schmaltz or matjes one of our boys made it from here it’s a local call because I didn’t want my mouth to be filled with food if you should call you ate three the hostess says but who’s counting then I figured the debate was over because he took out his lunch and so I took out mine okay okay alright already so bring me a piece pie nu better bring me an apple on a paper plate when it comes to my health the man’s saying nothing’s too expensive back home you could be sick on that money for three years they treat their help well but tsu feel ungepatchket because he didn’t want to be a doctor or lawyer that’s why at least I’d have a shirt better you should have bought a hundred dollar hat it might be Yom Kipper for you but it’s Simchat Torah in my pants I couldn’t walk for a year not bad for shlishi no but Rothschilds are what’s it to you if I keep on winning but if we pay him two rubles a week what will he have to worry about the Tsar doesn’t want just any ruble he wants your ruble and keep the Czar far away from us somebody has to buy retail but you have to understand it just doesn’t pay to cook for two people it wouldn’t hurt it’s not my heaven it’s her hell and to my brother-inlaw whom I made a promise to mention him in my will hello there Danny oy such a healthy man oy was I tired but the one thing is that it’s impossible to get red ink anywhere you got maybe another globe thanks Rabbi lately we’ve had so much room pregnant too what you mean a wart the assistant says it’s a hump nonsense says the shadchan who’d lend silverware to such thieves yes but do the dogs know that no but try and tell them that after you’re shot sh the fire’s not until Thursday I didn’t think it would rain I only trust my own watch because I’m also from Minsk from Pinsk I take all the money throw it up in the air and whatever God wants he keeps I deliver and so I’m here to tell you I’ll marry her for half that pig says the officer Mendelssohn the philosopher replies Doc listen the man says if you had my headaches I wouldn’t worry about them neither if I had his voice I’d sing just as well a Heifetz he’s not Ostropoler Rabinovich says we’ve been friends for years he’s the one with the yarmulke O the man says then puts his feet up on the seat again you’ll never guess who I had lunch with today our Rabbi’s so modest that if he eats it’s only to hide from others that he’s fasting isn’t it enough our Rabbi’s able to see all the way from Lemberg to Lublin well it’s a miracle here if our Rabbi does anything God asks of him tell me who told you that look why should we both tremble Barry look around you the sun’s shining we’re sitting around in our shirtsleeves the water’s blue calm tell me Barrele you call this winter you’re velcome oy you’ve gone and changed your name too sh he thinks we’re teaching him English I’d do a little teaching on the side the morning or the afternoon I can wait I just don’t like living in a place where they deliver mail at three in the morning whaddya want can’t she have one fault you needn’t lower your voice the shadchan says she’s deaf too listen the man replies who listens just because you’re having a bad month should I have one too I work so I can drink should I give up drinking so I can work what do you take us for a coupla goyim the difference between us is that I’m an apikoros and you’re a goy then the merchant wires back cancel order STOP can’t wait that long I don’t understand says the man if I’m broke I can’t eat strudel and if I have some money I shouldn’t eat strudel tell me then when I’m supposed to eat strudel you call this living this you call living what do you know from living no sometimes we switch aha what’s it to you if it doesn’t whistle I just put that in there to confuse you nu so it doesn’t sing two out of three ain’t bad you’re going to lose your hundred because I ain’t gonna dream of paying you back until the Day of Judgment we have three days to learn to live underwater schmuck I’m drowning nu so it’s not like a fountain welcome to America Shaun Ferguson he lived at home until he was thirtythree he went into his father’s business and his mother thought he was God I know that one too hey Yossi print one less doctor gave him another six months he just puts a sign on the door that says Closed for Business the Holidays sh don’t make trouble it could’ve happened to me but the suspicion remains what’s a bracha why disturb the Rabbi on a night like this better one of them should die than one of us Bernie great news your sister died the dead girl is one of us you’re Joseph Cohen I didn’t recognize you funny you don’t look who thinks he’s a nothing also Cohen it’s like this: my father was a Cohen and his father was a Cohen and his father before that was a Cohen it’s steady work