Three Poems for the End of April

The Dark-Skinned Woman 

at the Sarajevo Seder Table

Like Shakespeare’s Dark Lady she poses a problem.

If she was a servant only, why did she take so prominent a place?

If she was a woman like the Queen of Sheba or Dalilah, whom did she seduce?

Is she rather like our Hadassah, Secret Queen of the night?

William’s muse was an Italian or Sefardi beauty, a Belmont girl.

We find her celebrated in the Song that is Solomon’s.

No problem there: she is the Shekinah, hidden amongst us.

 The Clinamen and the Chinamen

Nothing is ever straightforward, except a lie.

Deceptions are best when almost true, soft

And sweet, dulcet melodies, ever so sly,

Ever so slight, a feather breathed aloft

To tickle the fancy: as we are, out of the East,

Long held in suspicion, subtle in wit,

Never trusted, kept apart, in feast

Indulged, in fear and famine expelled or killed.

To survive, we have swerved, our rhetoric gently curved

Like an alphabet covered in history round the sound

Of someone speaking gibberish to the moon, unobserved

In the shadows, outlandish revenant of ancient time

When nothing meant what it said and truth was a crime,

Except the people who lie hidden underground.

Back to Cuba

I told my mother I was going to Oriente Provence

to fight with Fidel: she said do you want peanut butter

sandwiches or tuna fish.  It was hard to decide,

so I stayed at home and read the news.  Then one night

my father came: Listen to this: the radio announcer cried:

Havana has fallen, the Communists have taken over

the casinos, the whorehouses and the bus lines: Viva

La Revolucion!  So Batista was no more.

I think now I should have said peanut butter and gone

to fight, or maybe tuna fish.  How can one decide?