New Poetry
Tzimtzum
take the body
banjaxed by its multiplying failures
and the mind
encumbered by unexpected subtractions
so the path ahead narrows and steepens
towards a destination
neither sought nor known
a world-entire begins its slow retreat
keys that opened the house for decades
refuse to turn
no matter how they’re coaxed and coddled
and she is standing like a stranger
on the wrong side of the door
but lucky to have found
this street which went missing
on the morning errand
circling the neighbourhood
its landmarks foreign and bewildering
inscrutable signs on the map
her memory a chalkboard being chased
by a fiend with an eraser
she who could shingle a roof or hotwire a car
Gematrist of Trollope and James
interpreter of tomes, of symbols and ciphers
is light as a husk adrift on a random current
while an obliterating smoke
scrolls through the mind’s swarm of thoughts
evicting meaning
is the hour too late
to take the body and the mind
build them a garden
densely planted with love and friendship
seeded thickly with stories
set free every question you meant to ask
unlock every answer
keep nothing back
before there is only nothing
The Teacher Who Hated Me
I am now the age that you were then
and still
the flapping tails of your blue labcoat
and the jolly face you turned to others
taunt from the formalin haze
of oneiric halls and stairwells
whose image did I conjure in you
a favoured or wayward sister
whose life and deeds eclipsed your own
I was a silent repository
for your frustrations
no haruspex, how could I divine
that the frog’s life I dismantled deftly
would fail to please
and no objective measure
of my multiple choices
would bring anything but scorn
the final project that sealed my fate
a history of mythological creatures
drew a damning D of disapproval
a shameful stain
my mirrored face hurled back at me
this is a Canopic jar
for the remains of a memory of failure
and I am taking you apart
organ by organ to put you in it
stoppered for eternity
your heart and its workings
have been weighed
and judged heavier than a feather
let the gryphons and chimeras
have their way
The Cabinet Without Curiosity
under the Ottoman arches
of Mohilever Street’s mothballed
museum of nature
the oracle of the past
holds court to no audience
stiff-necked from so much looking back
she gazes at the padlocked entrance
imagining the sound
of ibex and hyrax, tortoise and turtledove
jailbreaks from a glassed-in diorama
pummelling the weighty door with rigour
as if they could find home again
in the changed surrounding hills
herbarium pages brittle with heat
and mossed with damp
release their specimens
the unlit air flitters with wingbeats
of cyclamen and bugloss, caper and anemone
rootless and free
to scramble and rewrite their names
she could tell of years of schoolgirls
long-sleeved and sombre
herded through by wary teachers
for their annual inoculation
as if curiosity could be stilled
and dangerous questions etherized
by a dose of dusty science
if you asked she’d foretell
the ripples cast by a primordial fear
that fed the rivers which watered the tree
that gave forth the fruit of an enduring fiction
in a long-ago garden not far from here
but now to her delight
a different kind of garden thrives
behind the 19th-century museum
all who hunger
for fruit or for knowledge
may come and eat their fill
The Hebrew word “tzimtzum” means reduction or contraction. It is used in a variety of contexts, including mathematics and Kabbalistic thought. This poem is dedicated to my mother, who is struggling with dementia.
