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Matisse, too, when the fingers ceased to work, Worked larger and bolder, his primary colors celebrating The weddings of innocence and glory, innocence and glory Monet when the cataracts blanketed his eyes Painted swirls of rage, and when his sight recovered Painted water lilies, Picasso claimed I do not seek, I find, and stuck to that story About himself, and made that story stick. Damn the fathers. We are talking about defiance.

Not having spoken for years now, I know you claim exile from my consciousness. Yet I wear mourning whole nights through for that embrace that warmed my ignorant lust even past intimacies you had dreamed. I played your daughter-husband, lover-son, to earn both Abraham and Ishmael's guilt for your indulgence, and in time, reproach. Who sent us to that wilderness we both now know, although I blamed you for that house of women too many years. But Time is a waiting woman, not some old man with a stupid beard, and when I finally met my father I found him arrogant and dull, a formican liar with an Austrian accent. Well, we meet the phantom that we long for in the end, and getting there is half the grief. Meanwhile, my theories rearrange themselves like sand before this woman whose flaccid breasts sway with her stumblings, whose diamonds still thaw pity from my eyes. You're older than I thought. But so am I, and grateful that we've come to this: a ragged truce, an affirmation in me tht your strength, your pushiness, your sharp love, your embroidery of lies—all, all were survival tools, as when, during our personal diaspora, you stood in some far country blocks away, burning poems I no longer sent you like Yahrzeit candles in my name, unsure of me at last who sought a birthright elsewhere, beyond the oasis of your curse, even beyond that last mirage, your blessing. Mother, in ways neither of us can ever understand, I have come home.

Goaded and harassed in the factory That tears our life up into bits of days Ticked off upon a clock which never stays, Shredding our portion of Eternity, We break away at last, and steal the key Which hides a world empty of hours; ways Of space unroll, and Heaven overlays The leafy, sun-lit earth of Fantasy. Beyond the ilex shadow glares the sun, Scorching against the blue flame of the sky. Brown lily-pads lie heavy and supine Within a granite basin, under one The bronze-gold glimmer of a carp; and I Reach out my hand and pluck a nectarine.

She could live on chips on paint chips potato chips the poker chips he stacked in towers on the nightstand she could live in glass or underground or in his Cadillac she lived inside his head his cowboy boots she found a scorpion in once stabbed him in the shoulder by mistake he called her lucky charm called her witch made her practice in a walk-in closet how to cast a spell draw fortune how to make herself more pretty she dreamed she buried the brother she didn’t have dreamed her brother was dwarfed he died when her father called her pet he died when her father left she learned to live in the parking lot alone outside the casino learned to live at the bar by the pool tables theatres where men shot men raped women shot women shot themselves skinned animals ran one another over and over she learned to live in his smoke his vodka his idea of perfection the perfect girl the perfect evening unencumbered by her needs she dreamed of being buried on her knees her knees are plum so cute and sore so sturdy the father is dying now the girl is grown she dances with knives in her panties the men love her knives she loves the mistakes she makes the knives are her father the men are her father the panties are wool are sheep she dances in sheep with knives she strips off the sheep and for a moment feels her flesh at peace with her flesh she almost puts away the knives almost lets the men lose interest there is still so much work to do

On the platter set out in the center of the Matyó-embroidered tablecloth was the syringe. And around it was silence. My father gazed at my mother, and she back at him. Slowly, faltering, he began to speak. I was seized by an unusual shuddering. I recall that he used the word fate, and that if   I consented to the injected dose, we could all fall asleep. We would stay together for all time. And evade the uncertainty in mortifying desperation. A fifteen-year-old’s desire to live cried out in me: “No!” To which my father stated: “If you want to live, then we too must keep on living, because we can’t leave you by yourself.” My father was the village doctor. I grew up with no siblings. My mother’s sister lived next door, with her husband and two children, Nelly and Gyurika. In the evenings I prayed: “Merciful Lord of mine, My eyes have closed, but thine, yet still are open, father mine, Watch over me as I recline.” Then this: “In one God I believe, in one homeland I believe, in the eternal divine truth I believe, in Hungary’s re- surrection I believe. Amen.” Gyuri could not study in Pest, he went to Brünn. Later, not even there. Then the family sent him to Toulouse. My mind could not comprehend. Then one of uncle Vilmos’s servants murdered him with six ax-blows. He screamed crazed into the courtyard: “That’s what the stinking   Jew deserved!” I found him, his head smashed open. I ran to my father, who didn’t even believe it. And one after the other, the horrors came. Nelly lived in Újvidék with her husband. Uncle Ernő was in the middle of shaving when Hungarians broke into the flat. They were looking for the family. The nanny quickly threw a quilt onto six-month-old Tomika, they didn’t notice him. Peterke was out with Nelly. Uncle Ern ő was executed on the ice of   the Danube. Nelly did not recover. She knitted pullovers, each more beautiful than the next, so as not to feel the pain. She went to Pest to learn a trade, so she could support her children. That’s how it was when nineteen-forty-four came. On March 15, one of my teachers said, “You remain seated,” while the class sang the Anthem, “and be quiet.” On the day of the nineteenth, the Germans invaded. From then on, it was obligatory to wear the star. Through the intervention of the medical officer and the Lord Lieutenant, my father could have stayed out. I had to move to the ghetto with my mother. My father said “The family should stay together.” All up and down our street they stood, to bid farewell. Father acknowledged them, but already he was just waiting for the end. He had aged by decades. Then the injection, the one I already spoke of, turned up on the table with the Matyó embroidery. We sat in the evening underneath the open sky before being loaded onto the freight cars. The doctor from the next village drank mercury chloride with his wife. Despite my father’s stomach lavage, they succumbed by the morning. There were eighty of us in the wagon. An expectant mother gave birth on the way. But with no water, my father could not save them. There were those who went mad in the freight cars. My father taught me always to say “Ich will arbeiten.” On the seventh of   July the train stopped. Father read the plaque, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and said, “We are lost!” Megaphones blared, “Leave your packages in the wagons, they will be brought to you later. Special vehicles are coming for the sick and the elderly, just remain sitting,” they repeated, “everything will be fine. Men exit the wagon to the left, women to the right.” As farewell, my papa said, “Always be my clever, my obedient, my good little girl...    ” That is how we parted for eternity. Tomika and Peterke were squeezing my hand tightly, but my mother said, “Don’t you want to sit down? We can walk. Come...    ” We moved forward in a column of five rows. The bulbs of the searchlights blinded us in the eyes. A German officer, legs wide apart. He stood there somewhere far away. Sent us to the right. Had to get undressed in a room. Then they sent us into another, and the iron door slammed, bolted shut. Screaming, I pounded on it again and again. We truly were lost, as last I understood.... Turning around, the others already shaved bald. I didn’t recognize anyone. They stood there like sheep. Upon their skin, the writing of gooseflesh.

O that ’twere possible After long grief and pain To find the arms of my true love Round me once again!... A shadow flits before me, Not thou, but like to thee: Ah, Christ! that it were possible For one short hour to see The souls we loved, that they might tell us What and where they be!

A Monodrama O that 'twere possible After long grief and pain To find the arms of my true love Round me once again! When I was wont to meet her In the silent woody places By the home that gave me birth, We stood tranced in long embraces Mixt with kisses sweeter sweeter Than anything on earth. A shadow flits before me, Not thou, but like to thee: Ah Christ, that it were possible For one short hour to see The souls we loved, that they might tell us What and where they be. It leads me forth at evening, It lightly winds and steals In a cold white robe before me, When all my spirit reels At the shouts, the leagues of lights, And the roaring of the wheels. Half the night I waste in sighs, Half in dreams I sorrow after The delight of early skies; In a wakeful doze I sorrow For the hand, the lips, the eyes, For the meeting of the morrow, The delight of happy laughter, The delight of low replies. 'Tis a morning pure and sweet, And a dewy splendour falls On the little flower that clings To the turrets and the walls; 'Tis a morning pure and sweet, And the light and shadow fleet; She is walking in the meadow, And the woodland echo rings; In a moment we shall meet; She is singing in the meadow, And the rivulet at her feet Ripples on in light and shadow To the ballad that she sings. So I hear her sing as of old, My bird with the shining head, My own dove with the tender eye? But there rings on a sudden a passionate cry, There is some one dying or dead, And a sullen thunder is roll'd; For a tumult shakes the city, And I wake, my dream is fled; In the shuddering dawn, behold, Without knowledge, without pity, By the curtains of my bed That abiding phantom cold. Get thee hence, nor come again, Mix not memory with doubt, Pass, thou deathlike type of pain, Pass and cease to move about! 'Tis the blot upon the brain That will show itself without. Then I rise, the eave-drops fall, And the yellow vapours choke The great city sounding wide; The day comes, a dull red ball Wrapt in drifts of lurid smoke On the misty river-tide. Thro' the hubbub of the market I steal, a wasted frame; It crosses here, it crosses there, Thro' all that crowd confused and loud, The shadow still the same; And on my heavy eyelids My anguish hangs like shame. Alas for her that met me, That heard me softly call, Came glimmering thro' the laurels At the quiet evenfall, In the garden by the turrets Of the old manorial hall. Would the happy spirit descend From the realms of light and song, In the chamber or the street, As she looks among the blest, Should I fear to greet my friend Or to say "Forgive the wrong," Or to ask her, "Take me, sweet, To the regions of thy rest"? But the broad light glares and beats, And the shadow flits and fleets And will not let me be; And I loathe the squares and streets, And the faces that one meets, Hearts with no love for me: Always I long to creep Into some still cavern deep, There to weep, and weep, and weep My whole soul out to thee.

I have led her home, my love, my only friend, There is none like her, none. And never yet so warmly ran my blood And sweetly, on and on Calming itself to the long-wished-for end, Full to the banks, close on the promised good. None like her, none. Just now the dry-tongued laurels’ pattering talk Seem’d her light foot along the garden walk, And shook my heart to think she comes once more; But even then I heard her close the door, The gates of Heaven are closed, and she is gone. There is none like her, none. Nor will be when our summers have deceased. O, art thou sighing for Lebanon In the long breeze that streams to thy delicious East, Sighing for Lebanon, Dark cedar, tho’ thy limbs have here increased, Upon a pastoral slope as fair, And looking to the South, and fed With honeyed rain and delicate air, And haunted by the starry head Of her whose gentle will has changed my fate, And made my life a perfumed altar-frame; And over whom thy darkness must have spread With such delight as theirs of old, thy great Forefathers of the thornless garden, there Shadowing the snow-limbed Eve from whom she came. Here will I lie, while these long branches sway, And you fair stars that crown a happy day Go in and out as if at merry play, Who am no more so all forlorn, As when it seemed far better to be born To labour and the mattock-hardened hand Than nursed at ease and brought to understand A sad astrology, the boundless plan That makes you tyrants in your iron skies, Innumerable, pitiless, passionless eyes, Cold fires, yet with power to burn and brand His nothingness into man. But now shine on, and what care I, Who in this stormy gulf have found a pearl The countercharm of space and hollow sky, And do accept my madness, and would die To save from some slight shame one simple girl. Would die; for sullen-seeming Death may give More life to Love than is or ever was In our low world, where yet ’tis sweet to live. Let no one ask me how it came to pass; It seems that I am happy, that to me A livelier emerald twinkles in the grass, A purer sapphire melts into the sea. Not die; but live a life of truest breath, And teach true life to fight with mortal wrongs. Oh, why should Love, like men in drinking-songs, Spice his fair banquet with the dust of death? Make answer, Maud my bliss, Maud made my Maud by that long loving kiss, Life of my life, wilt thou not answer this? “The dusky strand of Death inwoven here With dear Love’s tie, makes love himself more dear.” Is that enchanted moan only the swell Of the long waves that roll in yonder bay? And hark the clock within, the silver knell Of twelve sweet hours that past in bridal white, And die to live, long as my pulses play; But now by this my love has closed her sight And given false death her hand, and stol’n away To dreamful wastes where footless fancies dwell Among the fragments of the golden day. May nothing there her maiden grace affright! Dear heart, I feel with thee the drowsy spell. My bride to be, my evermore delight, My own heart’s heart, my ownest own, farewell; It is but for a little space I go: And ye meanwhile far over moor and fell Beat to the noiseless music of the night! Has our whole earth gone nearer to the glow Of your soft splendour that you look so bright? I have climbed nearer out of lonely Hell. Beat, happy stars, timing with things below, Beat with my heart more blest than heart can tell. Blest, but for some dark undercurrent woe That seems to draw—but it shall not be so: Let all be well, be well.

If faith is a tree that sorrow grows and women, repentant or not, are swamps, a man who comes for solace here will be up to his knees and slow getting out. A name can turn on anyone. But say that a woman washes the dust from a stranger’s feet and sits quite dry-eyed in front of her mirror at night. The candle flame moves with her breath, as does the hand of the painter, who sees in the flame his chance for virtuosity. She lets him leave her shoulder bare. Bedlam’s distilled from a Mary too, St. Mary’s of Bethlehem, shelter for all the afflicted and weak of mind. The donors conceived of as magi no doubt. The mad and the newborn serve equally well for show. A whore with a heart, the rich with a conscience, the keepers of language and hospitals badly embarrassed at times by their charge. The mirror refuses the candle, you see. And tears on another’s behalf are not the mirrors he’s pleased to regard. Who loves his ironies buxom and grave must hate the foolish water of her eyes.

Swung from the toes out, Belly-breath riding on the knuckles, The ten-pound maul lifts up, Sails in an arc overhead, And then lifts you! It floats, you float, For an instant of clear far sight— Eye on the crack in the end-grain Angle of the oak round Stood up to wait to be split. The maul falls—with a sigh—the wood Claps apart and lies twain— In a wink. As the maul Splits all, may You two stay together.