I was this screaming boy, screaming (this was
no dream) against the barber's crawling
clip, the shorn-hair-plastered hands
waving a two-bladed, crisscross
knife at my childhood, that fell
on my eyes, neck, lips and screaming mouth.
I am this still man, sitting (this
is my pain) before the mirror, star-
ing at another still man
sitting in another. I, sprawling
underneath the straight-edge of His will,
cough at the hot, damp final cloth.
II
Why was the girls'
hair streaming in
the wind? There
was no wind.
—Diary of Isaac Katzenelson
I was this prodigious boy and stood
on that Warsaw corner with the heaving
thousands and my proud-plead-
ing mother that day before vile
Stormtrooper Brand. There Yehudi-
I played my last victorious violin.
—and then, indifferent, went left to death
and streaming hair of girls in no wind.
I am this shocked man, leaning
against hacked ghetto wall before
my childrens'. . . . I must not (later)
go mad. . . . No love. Yet not the
real hate, either. Not one. Only our-
selves we loathe and that is
our shame. So few and self-torn!
God, they curse themselves in your name!
III
I was this looking boy and asked
about the baby found red-fresh-
dead in after-circus lot. Sent
off to movie with soft roll and jam,
the big man leaping for the blonde girl's
twisting horse's bit yelled me
to my sturdy feet. Yet I
was foundling Moses, too; but
needed no Pharaoh's daughter, no
cowboy father. I could discover
my basket in every river. I would thrive.
I am my dead father, smoking on the open
porch, holding my tired boy as I
point to far-off, orange, grand-
iose roman candles, his coat-of-
many-colored sky. But he will not
sit and rock. And, timid-wise
Jacob, my warm gift brings him
no nearer to his Independence Day.
He wants his dreams. He wants his jealous
brothers. I send him back to sleep
and stare off up my ladder, down his pit.