Auslander, Dattelstrauch, Hymen-Slutsky, Israelien, Jakov-Jablovsky, Lipschitz, Osterthal, de Quadros, Rothweißblau, Steinstein, Witznitz, ben Zona; Levitansky, McJohnson, Normal, Oppenstrauss, Putzl (though those answering aren’t the twelve answerable, not most of the time, anyway; rather, they’re impostors employed to provide a semblance of reassurance to the public, hand-holding while the real waste away, counting days on the calendars of their fingers, sequestered in Tweisstwinning psychological interviews ideationally intended to mitigate the trauma of Shade’s inquiry, subsequent interrogations, really interrogations about interrogations, dumped to the Garden’s files; their representatives, presented to the public as wistful, nostalgic, resigned, having been ordered to a certain number of responses created to ensure satisfactory variance among them: yes, no, black, white, anything but gray; I was a father of three, a restaurateur, a farmer, a famous television personality myself, if you don’t remember); of them, then, how many can most accurately be described as far-shtink-en-er, merely fer-shlug-gin-er; are you terrified or just settling; ready or not; please keep your answers as brief as possible, as briefed; are they up to the job, talk to me here — we want qualifications, a program, resume and references, too; all questions though in truth One, which would be the twin father of any survivor: are they prepared, any of them, to assume the mantle, to bear the crown — constitutionally; able to direct the maternally heavy flows of power, to overlord the hierarchies of delegating angels, arrayed beneath the thronewomb, birthwrought of living fame: supplication arriving on the Friday late, put off until next Monday, late afternoon at that, winged lazily around the meeting room that is Heaven, which is stocked with a hundred different salvations, alphabetized how in portfolios iconoclastically embossed with amulets, accessible only to those who know how to invoke the proper memoranda prayer; and we all say, let there be strategy, and there is, and it’s damn — passable. Leave it be.
And then there are ten…who — in the spirit of the season, it’s said — are to be destroyed by the Angel of Death, that killed the butchers that slew the ox, that drank the water that quenched the fire, that burned the stick that beat the dog, that bit the cat that ate the kid our Father the Holy One Blessed Be He had bought for two zuzim, the first zuz and the last zuz as it’s been said, then drunkly sung since for lifetimes…a quorum in wild ferment, a destroyed slain drunk wet and burnt beaten bitten eaten then bought minyan, survivors barking and clawing their prayer now unto the Holy One Whosoever He is, or was, praying for their lives in nasalized whinnies and whines, without words, as they’re unknown to them, have been forgotten, but it’s the thought that has to matter in this mess, isn’t it, is the matter, the alephbet stammer, the heartword beginning with yod hey vav hey…only the most superlative of intentions — to make peace with ignorance; settling down on coffin pews to daven their mincha, silently, a ma’ariv for the night of their souls oseh shalom to you, too. Ten menschs, full grown almost to death, tripping over the straps of their phylacteries, tangling in the filigreed knots of their fringes, tying more out of superstition, worry, holding their siddurim upside down then holding them right side up but opening from the wrong end to mispronounce their words if only in their mindful hope left to right to left, with blind fingers and mute palms destroying the spines of the books, and their own, too, in their abject, groveling shuckle; mourning to themselves that there’s not even a rabbi among them, none to slam shtender, keep order, no more; as if they would have listened to one had he been still, even she. Auslander, Dattelstrauch, Israelien, Jakov-Jablovsky, Lipschitz, de Quadros, Rothweißblau, Steinstein, Witznitz, ben Zona; Babel, Masterson, Nitzwitz, Yarmolinsky…
