Next will be the fragments from a longer love
poem called, "Natalia."
I'm just going to read a few fragments from it.
And you'll see the pieces on the bottom of the page, I believe--
I'm only going to read the top of the page.
And if you want to read the bottom of the page,
you could do so yourself, OK?
So, from, "Natalia."
"On the night I met her, the Rabbi sang and sighed,
God's lips on his brow, Torah in his hands.
I unfastened her stockings, worried
that I have stopped worrying.
She slept in my bed, I slept on a chair.
She slept on a chair, I slept in the kitchen.
She left her slippers in my shower,
in my Torah, her slippers in each sentence I spoke.
I said, those I love die, grow old, are born.
But I love the stubbornness of her bedclothes!
I bite them, taste bedclothes, the sweet mechanism
of pillows and covers.
A serious woman, she danced without a shirt,
covering what she could.
We lay together on Yom Kippur, chosen by a wrong God.
The people of a book, broken by a book.
'Let me kiss you inside your elbow, Natalia,
sister of the careful.'
He spoke of gratitude, his fingers trembling as he spoke.
She unfastened two buttons of his trousers,
to learn two languages--
one for ankles and one for remembering.
Or maybe she thought it was bad luck
to have a dressed man in the house.
With an eyebrow pencil, she painted his mustache.
It made her want to touch him and she didn't.
She opened her robe and closed it, and opened
and closed it again.
She whispered, 'Come here, nervous.'
He followed her on his tiptoes.
We fell in love and eight years passed.
Eight years.
Carefully, I dissect this number.
We have lived with three cats in five cities,
learning how a man ages invisibly.
Eight years!
Eight!
We chilled lemon vodka and we kissed on the floor,
among the peels of lemons.
And each night, we stood up and saw ourselves.
A man and a woman, whispering 'Lord,' one word the soul
destroys to make clear.
How magical it is to live!
It rained at the market.
With my fingers, she tapped out her iambics on the back
of our largest casserole, and we sang, 'Sweet dollars,
why aren't you in my pockets?'