WEBVTT

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I'm on the subject of history.

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Thankfully, there are heroes
also and some of those heroes

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died tragically.

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For me, many of those
heroes are poets.

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And this poem is about
two beautiful poets.

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I say about, but really,
it's an homage to them.

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And those poets, their names
are so beautiful said out loud.

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I hope you know their work and,
well, if you don't, that you

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will look for them.

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Osip Mandelstam, the
great Russian poet.

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Killed at the hands
of the thug, Stalin,

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who sent him away for
writing a poem about him.

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And the beautiful Paul Celan,
dead at the hands of Hitler.

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"Belling the Leader
of a Flock of Sheep."

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Celan and Mandelstam
depart in a boxcar

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before strangely burning
down to darkness.

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Each Jew is cold and
unspoiled, a stone potato

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that thugs fork and brandish.

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But whosoever pulls this
sword from this stone

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shall be the rightful heir,
whereupon free spirits

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everywhere withdraw
jewel-handled blades

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from history's rib cage.

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And in no time, the living
inhabit the beautiful loam

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and moonlight of an
old world of ripe figs,

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and pickled herring
against unprecedented evil.

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The act of writing of
apples, shoe polish,

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and steaming potatoes
for history is heroic.

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At best, an ordinary
impossible struggle

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pitting the living
against death,

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the old country
where horseradish

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grows tall along a fence.

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