I'm on the subject of history.
Thankfully, there are heroes also and some of those heroes
died tragically.
For me, many of those heroes are poets.
And this poem is about two beautiful poets.
I say about, but really, it's an homage to them.
And those poets, their names are so beautiful said out loud.
I hope you know their work and, well, if you don't, that you
will look for them.
Osip Mandelstam, the great Russian poet.
Killed at the hands of the thug, Stalin,
who sent him away for writing a poem about him.
And the beautiful Paul Celan, dead at the hands of Hitler.
"Belling the Leader of a Flock of Sheep."
Celan and Mandelstam depart in a boxcar
before strangely burning down to darkness.
Each Jew is cold and unspoiled, a stone potato
that thugs fork and brandish.
But whosoever pulls this sword from this stone
shall be the rightful heir, whereupon free spirits
everywhere withdraw jewel-handled blades
from history's rib cage.
And in no time, the living inhabit the beautiful loam
and moonlight of an old world of ripe figs,
and pickled herring against unprecedented evil.
The act of writing of apples, shoe polish,
and steaming potatoes for history is heroic.
At best, an ordinary impossible struggle
pitting the living against death,
the old country where horseradish
grows tall along a fence.