TELL May - July 2012 - Emanuel Synagogue

Portrait
Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man*
Your eyes are lidded in prayer, old man.
You embrace the song like a man embraces his
wife, tenderly, with the want, the need, written all over
your face. A woman loves this sort of humility.
You embrace the song like a man who rises at
dawn, cocoons himself in his tallit with its blue-threaded
tzitziyot, and cries out for help. The Holy One, blessed be
He, loves this sort of humility.
You embrace the song like a man who lies down at
night and sings his Shema, in the face of his bewilderment
and failures. Life loves this sort of humility.
The Presence comes down.
All the people feel it.
Your head is covered, and your eyes are lidded in
prayer, old man.
I saw you. I saw you standing on the beach,
watching them build. I saw you waving your arms
frantically, but they wouldn’t listen. They built a wooden
tower of exotic shape, Semitic, Greek, Roman. He did not
fit it, so they cut off his manhood and threw it into the
sea. They cut off his Jewish body, and made him into a
god’s head. They made themselves into a god’s body. He
raged, stricken with grief.
And Suzanne goes on making her cups of pretend
tea while the oranges fade in her hand.
The river is frozen solid, yet still his tears are warm.
And the children leaning out for love
Are ravished without mercy.
The Presence has fled.
Maybe I’ll include razor blades when I sell the
story.
But it could have a happy ending. As Buber says,
maybe one day we’ll be brought in from the exiles of
the religions. Maybe one day we’ll all come in from the
cold. It looks wintry out, the clouds lie low. Have another
peach.
You know, I’m beginning to understand that you
can’t have G-d without reality. You can’t make reality
up. You have to deal with the actual, or you’re embracing
self-deception, you’re kissing the hem of evil. My
Catholic upbringing made the metaphysical world realer
than real. The flesh and blood world was little more
than a shadow. Parmenides and Plato reclined on their
heavenly couch, overlooking all things. Down there, in
the City of Man, it didn’t matter if you killed a Jew, or
screwed a child. Three Hail Marys: she’ll be sweet. We
were on the way to perfection; the ideal, and only the
ideal, shimmered in our sights.
A nice, buttery, melt-in-the-mouth, crispy-on-theoutside
croissant for me. You too? Every woman has
something to get off her chest. If you listen up, and wash
the dishes, we’ll play.
I am a lioness with your balls between my teeth.
8
www.emanuel.org.au
Answer me this question and I won’t eat you up. How do
you tell the difference between a real pearl and a fake
one?
You don’t know? I’m afraid it’s all over for you.
Rrooouuwlll!!
Oh, but you, you in your animal skin, you are the
most wild thing of all. You have the South Sea Island
pearl between my breasts between your teeth. Do you
feel the gravel? A fake pearl feels smooth between the
teeth.
I sold my grass-green field, and all I had.
I left beloved friends behind.
Come, let’s get dressed, my muffler please, and
walk. To be a Jew is to be the gravel, to see things, and
deal with them, as they are. And talk about them, and
irritate everyone. The voice helps. Life is all. It is all he has
given us. The wind slices me into you. Let’s slip between
the gingham curtains.
Steaming coffee fills our nostrils like frankincense,
while we sit here, in the café naked to each other; you, in
your white flannel trousers; me, my arms wrapped about
my shawl. Is that why the Presence is here? Because we
are naked, I mean. I’ve been thinking, Leonard, that the
Name is the ultimate reality, and that’s your allure. You
deal the real. In the other place, they bake it, shake, it,
make it, fake it.
But you and I are here, where the wild things are. I
smell mocha on your tongue and lust in every pore.
If you don’t desire me, the very stones will cry out.
Do you ever stand beneath a tree and look up to
see its limbs spread in ecstasy, Elcohen, Eldushka? Only
the sky gets to see. Ghost gums do it here, and maples
on the forty-ninth parallel.
The carnal Jews. The perfidious Jews.
I’ll be a carnal Jew for you. I’ll be an inter-breeder.
For you
I will be a ghetto Jew
and dance
and put white stockings
on my twisted limbs
and poison wells
across the town
For you
I will be a Dachau Jew
and lie down in lime
with twisted limbs
and bloated pain
* This prose poem weaves its way through this edition of
TELL. Written by one of our members, we share it with you
in celebration of dangerous ideas, and of the remarkable
creativity found amongst those who make up our community.
The portrait is (in part) of a particularly famous Jewish artist.
See if you can work out who it is before you get to the end of
the piece.