Three Poems

Mara Gale Fein

hard to say

grasp it or not

i offer my fair hand

as i pass and stop

always on my mind

your dead are

with foul hatreds

each has smeared the other

because some of us are vile

so do not turn your back on me

and love and hope

for we do pray to the same God of grief

slake our thirst from the same fountain

break bread at the same counter

we must ride on the same bus

in America

crouched in fear’s new ghettos

shot in synagogue or church or supermarket

lynched like Emmet Till or Leo Frank

smothered by patrolman’s knee or Zyclon B

starved and suffocated in slave ship or cattle car

Who suffered most?

i’m not interested

i’m not interested in

what i never told you

And It Came to Pass

You open a door marked Emergency

and the air is saturated with promises

Each of them has a human face.

One man makes a vow never to do anything wrong again,

another that the law will be his faith;

a young woman with outstretched hands

swears she will never die for lack of love or grief or regret.

But the clerics and the generals enter two by two

like questions and answers

and the dove flies away.

And you sit and watch the burning bush

consume nothing but you and your forgiveness.

And then you start again.

None Shall Defile Himself for the Dead

Leviticus xxi, 1-3.

after Muriel Rukeyser

We live in the second century of world wars.

Most nights we clutch the edge

of the bed turn over

the stone

dig up the corpse, scream at the

heavens and the earth that

said let there be a God

in the morning we call friends.

Sodom and Gomorrah are booming, we agree.

Together, we pray to the men who

create gods from the dust of the earth;

the bulldozer and the stream roller,

the missile and the drone,

Prada and Ferragamo.

In the afternoon, we clock out,

turn the bloodied hourglass

into wages of memory

by the evening. We are in

confusion.

If none should defile himself

for the dead how are caskets to be paid for,

memorials to be built as

the night darkens

across waves of despair.

We send out the dove. She

returns with tears for the eyes,

pain for the heart.

Most mornings we

of cursed memories

wake to the light of night.

Others do not wake at all.