MENORAH
By Jack Hirschman
The basin of winter water
from the stream in which
I throw my face the morning after.
The candle is burning.
Neither mystic democracy
to fall back on. Nor an ideology
of secularity. Just the bed. Sacred.
Candle still burning.
No temple to regain but the overthrow
of all this painful indifference
that lives in the heart of things
weâve become. The candle goes on burning.
Fed up with chips to play,
to eat, to read whole books on
off a screen. The candle
burns on.
A guerrilla in the frigid jungle
of Nothing. Darkness but for
the burning candle.
Is this history, pre-history,
post-history? I look out the window.
Snow is on the branches of a poem
I wrote 30 years ago. Now. Tomorrow.
The candle glow will be turning blue.
O days of singing, dancing
and the dreidelings of glee,
why do you remind me of me?
I'm turning into stone again.
The candle's dimming.
A child is licking the melt
The candle is dark.
His eyes blaze in the dark all winter.
NIGHT FALLS
By Jack HirschmanNight falls
on its knees
and does
also tuck
their legs
in under
the moonlight.
I am sitting
in the very
same cafe seat
you sat in
the day after
I kissed you
drunkly on
the run, your
shoes under
the table
nailing me:
nature is all
around my mem-
ory, its belly
gently pulsing.
Sprang out of
the corral, the
mustangs! Why
here, and now?
Because of the
sound of their name.
And because you
loathe almost
most of all
the idea of any
animal in prison,
the human most
of all,
even this beast
you know best
and least,
who sleeps with
his third eye
ever open below
the waist:
a Three, a Spread
a Throne of a Bed,
a Carytid and,
at the foot,
the snake's Kiss.
It's the curve
of your back above
your knees in
the moonlight
the moonlight
and the way
your lips moving
slowly
up and down my cock
and the yes
there is
no
No in response to.
Volume 8 Index