Here at PopPop’s, he shoes polish, a volunteer when no one else would, he’d often joke around to groups that he lived here, as if underwater, down in the foyer’s fountain, with a ram’s horn for a snorkel how he’d subsist on spare shekels, drinking his dwell, accepting donations and wishes in kind…
Restored some time ago thanks to funding Federal matched by the State from the taxdeductible Other, various recently reprivatized sectors guilted into writing it all off on the wind, this tower’s lately sealprotected, signedover as landmark, thing even has a plaque on its face that they earmarked for it to be polished by hand once a moon; and lately, its penthouse condo unit’s become a place of pilgrimage for dayschools, and for yeshivas, too, when their kinder do the work, put in the hours, seem to merit six goldstarred and four quarters straightA’d a vacation from the Law, their studies thereof — a firsthand field-trip to sacrilege:
This would be Arschstrong’s room, the mensch relates to the group, who remembers their history? Come on, don’t be shy, Arschstrong was the special poo poo friend of whom, anyone, anyone?
Nothing.
Of PopPop Israelien, right!
Wow, you boychicks sure do know your history!
Pity him, he never gives up.
And whose PopPop was PopPop Israelien? zeyde to whom? do you know? It just happens to be a young boy named Benjamin Israelien!
Not much younger than you are.
Isn’t that wild?
But there’s no response, nothing registering, payos twirled around pale fingers, poked into sockets staring, vacant: who wants to rent them, get in on the groundfloor?
Benjamin Israelien, anyone know who that was?
That familiar to anyone?
Anyone?
How he always stops visitors as they leave, detains them (only a moment) to show them a photograph, found in Polandland or thereabouts, ca. 5761 it’s been dated, asking them to identify the subject — and surely, it’s Him.
Inquisitioned, they’re given the following options.
Is it, he asks—
A.) Baruch Spinoza, you know him?
B.) Your Zeyde you never knew, so sad how he died before you were born?
C.) Your Onkel, I mean, but when he was young and with his beard black as night?
D.) All of the above, as we’re all of us just manifestations of let’s say infinite Substance?
E.) None of the above.
F.) No one special.
Thus far they still must be thinking, still weighing their choice though already chosen — the scale of their eyes & ears tipping the scales of the heart…the choice already chosen for them by their own ignorance, or by curiosity’s failure; if you think you know so much then just tell me, the docent’s waiting to hear, don’t keep us in the dark, it’s a sin…as no one’s yet identified Him, Him as He was or is still (though to be fair, the horns B’s usually depicted with, when He’s depicted, throw most off), in this passport photograph represented as one Jacobson, Esq., ripped, creased, corners bent, found down the well of a village sunk so far to the east, the Ost it was called that it might be all the way around the world west again, lost.
