B under His blanket His covers, shivering how He shvitzes, wet He looses Himself, a slow slowing trickle shed all down His thighs, limbs writhing in warmth soon to leave Him, and then — and then nu it’s nothing, until Wanda: she who’s the mother now of a boy, the son her husband always wanted to name him Jacob Rosenkrantz his father’s Isaac Rosenkrantz, father of another Israel himself to father, time enough, how you know him…Isaac, I mean, yet another who, the one with the, and who, again, with the son who’ll be redeemed soonish enough from a Cohen it’s called, a Priest, the class who but, forget it, for a sum not to be sneezed at, gesundheit Wanda she remembers now, now rocking Benjamin, no Isaac, no Jacob, Israel in her arms he’s Yisroel, remembers only around midday and with the wash still to do and the, that night how she woke Him up up there in His room, in which He was alone and how she fought, how she struggled to get Him, all of Him to get it all proppedup and how, He didn’t recognize, how could He’ve been expected to know her, how’d she then waded through His parent’s room, dead, a storm outside His siblings’, His sisters’ dead all twelve of them together in their room alone in their rooms and how at last she’d come to His, and, hymn, and the rest…
And now her here, alone, too, if alive and with her son about midday with the drying and the washing of the dishes still to do and the cooking she has, too, with Hanna’s landrover one of three of their cars the other two you wouldn’t believe what they cost, always it’s leaking oil in the driveway below there’s a stain and as she looks out the window it looks like what else, who else’s face stained — and a hungry an always hung thirsty Rosenkrantz with a honeyed tongue gilding away raw at a nipple.
And yet somewhere outside this Ghetto, tonight, we live, somehow we’ve survived.
Our kinder have been born into a reduxed Golden Age, haven’t they, a new, quietleafed looparound added onto the Development’s annex: into a veritable Pax Americanus, in which Affiliation let’s say’s not only acceptable, OK (a world leftover from the War, the World one I mean, the Second), but also maybe admirable, in fashion, trendy…minorities overcoming obstacles, and good media coverage on that from inmost city to outmost Nowhere, this State truly Godforefutzed; pride in Them, in Us, succeeding, majority at large aiding its minority in rediscovering roots, and in reviving old practices…alienation as entrance, and so why not taking pride in that in an enriching, pluralistic, aren’t-we-so-damned-Demoncratic sense, with us and I mean Us attempting to barrierbreak, to cross borders until the only barriers we’ll ever break again, the only borders we’ll ever hope to cross, will just be those of our own creative erection — and who to apologize to after that? But what’s the alternative? Storms trooping death? That’s not what we want, is it? But that’s how we shine, how we thrive, how we’ve stayed alive all these sufferings — and perhaps even asking for it all the while, Who forbid, inviting It into our houses, our homes: ask and thou shalt receive, ask for the worse and thou shalt receive the worst, and the line for complaints, it forms to the Links.
Every year on the month on the day on the hour, the kinder — ours — begin the slow massing rebellion, the perpetual revolution of every generation since…we all remember, are O so diligent about doing so, never forget our remembering — here in our Development, here in our planned settlement, our subdivided encampment, at the edge, the furthest division most sub, and at night, they meet one another (weather permitting), amid the huddled park woods, in caves of their own dream, of their own industry, each others’ invention: tented bedsheets, clothespiled closets not yet redone for spring, and there discuss, question themselves deep into the programmed, inwired anarchy of their Religion, if religion it is, their ratty Race an anarchy that is its only true lifeforce, its only true meaning, and forceful — as natured nature from naturing nature as it’s said, they refuse to inherit ideas, they deny them, the traditions and the idealistically sacred the yadda and blah, how much they’re hesitant to revive them, to graft them on…what; to impose them upon even a quiet time, on lives that ring evermore empty, founding Paradise in the air.
But no, most won’t. Wishful thinking. Anything but.
Most will just be born into professions and marriages already vetted by their Parents, your Parent’s Friends, our Stockbrokers, and God, becoming Fathers & Mothers they’ll never kill because that would mean above all their own destruction, ours, yours, mine — and then, we’ll be mourned in the midst of the Congregation, donations to be offered in our memory: denominations of $18, 36, 54, 72 to be accepted to whichever fund best describes the limitations of your grief — like how much is your loss worth?
And our sons and our daughters will say Kaddish. But who’s to judge?
