Jerome Rothenberg

The cruel majority emerges! Hail to the cruel majority! They will punish the poor for being poor. They will punish the dead for having died. Nothing can make the dark turn into light for the cruel majority. Nothing can make them feel hunger or terror. If the cruel majority would only cup their ears the sea would wash over them. The sea would help them forget their wayward children. It would weave a lullaby for young & old. (See the cruel majority with hands cupped to their ears, one foot is in the water, one foot is on the clouds.) One man of them is large enough to hold a cloud between his thumb & middle finger, to squeeze a drop of sweat from it before he sleeps. He is a little god but not a poet. (See how his body heaves.) The cruel majority love crowds & picnics. The cruel majority fill up their parks with little flags. The cruel majority celebrate their birthday. Hail to the cruel majority again! The cruel majority weep for their unborn children, they weep for the children that they will never bear. The cruel majority are overwhelmed by sorrow. (Then why are the cruel majority always laughing? Is it because night has covered up the city's walls? Because the poor lie hidden in the darkness? The maimed no longer come to show their wounds?) Today the cruel majority vote to enlarge the darkness. They vote for shadows to take the place of ponds Whatever they vote for they can bring to pass. The mountains skip like lambs for the cruel majority. Hail to the cruel majority! Hail! hail! to the cruel majority! The mountains skip like lambs, the hills like rams. The cruel majority tear up the earth for the cruel majority. Then the cruel majority line up to be buried. Those who love death will love the cruel majority. Those who know themselves will know the fear the cruel majority feel when they look in the mirror. The cruel majority order the poor to stay poor. They order the sun to shine only on weekdays. The god of the cruel majority is hanging from a tree. Their god's voice is the tree screaming as it bends. The tree's voice is as quick as lightning as it streaks across the sky. (If the cruel majority go to sleep inside their shadows, they will wake to find their beds filled up with glass.) Hail to the god of the cruel majority! Hail to the eyes in the head of their screaming god! Hail to his face in the mirror! Hail to their faces as they float around him! Hail to their blood & to his! Hail to the blood of the poor they need to feed them! Hail to their world & their god! Hail & farewell! Hail & farewell! Hail & farewell!

1 He takes a book down from his shelf & scribbles across a page of text:I am the final one. This means the world will end when he does. 2 In the Inferno, Dante conceives a Paradise of Poets & calls it Limbo. Foolishly he thinks his place is elsewhere. 3 Now the time has come to write a poem about a Paradise of Poets.

a trembling old man dreams of a chinese garden a comical old man dreams of newspapers under his rabbi's hat a simple tavernkeeper dreams of icicles & fisheyes a sinister tavernkeeper dreams of puddles with an angel of the law in every drop the furrier's plump daughter is dreaming of a patch of old vanilla the furrier's foreign daughter is dreaming of a hat from which a marten hangs the proud accountant dreams of a trolleycar over the frozen river the reluctant accountant dreams of his feet sleep in a fresh pair of red socks the silly uncle dreams of a history written by a team of Spanish doctors the uncle in the next apartment dreams of the cost of Katmandu the retired gangster dreams of a right turn into a field of sacred lemons the dancing gangster dreams of a carriage, a donkey, & a hand that holds the ace of spades the grim man with a proposition dreams of his fingers entering a pair of gloves the excited man with a proposition dreams of the letter E torn from the title of his poem the remarkable elevator operator dreams of the marriage of karl marx the easy elevator operator dreams of a seashell at the entry to the thirteenth floor the candid photographer dreams of a wooden synagogue inside his brother's camera the secret photographer dreams of a school of golden herrings drifting out to sea the yiddish dadaist dreams of rare steaks & platonic pleasures the rosy dadaist dreams that a honeycomb is being squashed against his face the mysterious stranger dreams of a white tablecloth on which black threads are falling the stranger whom no one sees dreams of his sister holding up a string of pearls the asthmatic tax collector dreams of a row of sacred numbers the rebellious tax collector dreams of a bathhouse set among old trees the robust timber merchant dreams of a wind that blows inside the blacksmith's bellows the sobbing timber merchant dreams that his hands have pressed the buttocks of his dreaming bride the man with a fish between his teeth dreams of a famine for forty-five days the man dressed in white dreams of a potato the savage gentile dreams of a dancer with flashy lightbulbs on her shoes the repentant gentile dreams of her fingers bringing honey to his lips the fancy barber dreams that his hands massage the captain's neck the silent barber dreams of a rooster with a thread tied to one leg the salty bridegroom dreams of horses galloping they swirl around the bridegroom's house the genuflecting bridegroom dreams of what his bride slides through her fingers he sees it white & trembling in the early sabbath light the fat man in the derby dreams that it is spring that his seed soon will be falling through an empty sky the ecstatic man in the derby dreams that if he dreams it his words will turn into flowers

1 he picks a coin up from the ground it burns his hand like ashes it is red & marks him as it marks the others      hidden he is hidden in the forest in a world of nails his dibbik fills him 2 Each night another one would hang himself. Airless boxcars. Kaddish. "What will they do with us?" The brown & black spots on their bellies. So many clothes. The field was littered. Ten thousand corpses in one place. Arranged in layers. I am moving down the field from right to left—reversing myself at every step. The ground approaches. Money. And still his great- est fear was that he would lose his shoes. 3 earth, growing fat with the slime of corpses      green & pink that ooze like treacle, turn into a kind of tallow that are black at evening       that absorb all light