Yermiyahu Ahron Taub
Village Tableau, Far from the Parade
The emptiness within the gilded frame faces me.
Confronts me.
The pendulum of someone’s lovingly-polished grandfather clock
swings back and forth in the hallway. Its horses will not be held.
Not exactly a tick-tock, but still a two-sided sound.
Yin and yang of Mother Time.
And the hallway floors devoid of runner of any kind are polished, too.
Mother T.’s younger sister Auntie Beulah sees to that.
Her hands gnarled, resplendent. Deft with the polish rag
and plaits of all kinds. Hair. Lanyard. Yarn.
How to weave the yarns, these other yarns,
match the variegated threads.
Would to say by saying,
tell with telling.
This tongue not shuttered,
but clipped, fettered.
Oh, this obliqueness.
Aargh to this between-the-line-ness.
Is that my body staring back at me from the void?
Is a picture needed here?
One in which I’m placing one foot before the other,
the clicking of my heels echoing over the cobblestones beyond the frame.
Only I hear other footsteps behind me.
Heavy ones.
And I know I’m not imagining a helmet gleaming above
and a night stick restless at the side.
Thud thud. Clomp clomp.
Or is it thud clomp, thud clomp?
Surely, these steps would have tired of me by now.
Surely, I could have stared their owners down,
invited them into the peal and guffaw and clink and souse
open until late beyond last call,
found a way to lose them in this labyrinth of alleys
for which our village is so renowned.
Come, all ye lost souls!
Lose and find yourselves over these cobblestones.
Surely, I could find a way to elude
the barbed-wire enclosures that had once been
and no longer are but might yet still ...
I hate to say, to name, what.
Surely, the ducking, this skirting, can be behind me.
Auntie Beulah won’t let me fall.
All these years,
and still this hiding.
The emptiness within the gilded frame faces me.
Confronts me.
The pendulum of someone’s lovingly-polished grandfather clock
swings back and forth in the hallway. Its horses will not be held.
Not exactly a tick-tock, but still a two-sided sound.
Yin and yang of Mother Time.
And the hallway floors devoid of runner of any kind are polished, too.
Mother T.’s younger sister Auntie Beulah sees to that.
Her hands gnarled, resplendent. Deft with the polish rag
and plaits of all kinds. Hair. Lanyard. Yarn.
How to weave the yarns, these other yarns,
match the variegated threads.
Would to say by saying,
tell with telling.
This tongue not shuttered,
but clipped, fettered.
Oh, this obliqueness.
Aargh to this between-the-line-ness.
Is that my body staring back at me from the void?
Is a picture needed here?
One in which I’m placing one foot before the other,
the clicking of my heels echoing over the cobblestones beyond the frame.
Only I hear other footsteps behind me.
Heavy ones.
And I know I’m not imagining a helmet gleaming above
and a night stick restless at the side.
Thud thud. Clomp clomp.
Or is it thud clomp, thud clomp?
Surely, these steps would have tired of me by now.
Surely, I could have stared their owners down,
invited them into the peal and guffaw and clink and souse
open until late beyond last call,
found a way to lose them in this labyrinth of alleys
for which our village is so renowned.
Come, all ye lost souls!
Lose and find yourselves over these cobblestones.
Surely, I could find a way to elude
the barbed-wire enclosures that had once been
and no longer are but might yet still ...
I hate to say, to name, what.
Surely, the ducking, this skirting, can be behind me.
Auntie Beulah won’t let me fall.
All these years,
and still this hiding.