Magnapoets Essays

Long Haul (Elisha Porat)

translated from the Hebrew by Alan Sacks.
 
 

I find myself these days getting ready for the long haul. I am seized early each morning by a strange fever of activity, as if I had spent all the night making plans instead of sleeping. How does a man ready himself to go down this long road? Well, first off, I have to rid myself of non-essentials and chuck those things I've accumulated that are now merely dead weight. I root nervously through shelves of books, skipping over the few that I love. I pull them from the case, weigh them in my hand and hastily put them back. So be it. Fate is on your side. You are not a heavy burden. On the contrary, I would find it difficult to set out on this long road without you.

But I am heartless towards the others. Their hours of grace, in which they were allowed to remain on the shelf, have gone. I no longer need them. Better that they make their way to another place, and quickly, before I mourn them. Books, after all, are not expendable. They merely change residences all their lives. From my room, they are moving to the little library recently established at a remote kibbutz in the south. Fine. May they live their lives of boredom forever. I have no need for them just now and their pathetic lives do not appeal to me these days. I want to start on my path clean, free and empty, unsaddled with debts, leaving behind neither letters nor notes. I have seen jottings, forgotten after their authors set out on the long haul, put to ugly use. I have an urge to sweep the desk, emptying the drawers that keep filling themselves. What hope is there for this world? What hope is there for me, preparing myself to take leave of it?
 

Some days ago, I was visited by one of my few friends, an old man who had been a scintillating intellectual in his youth only to devote all his talents to building his kibbutz. Only now and then did biting verses fly from his barbed pen, as if he could not hold them in.

"Parochial work," I sadly offer him my opinion of the samples he has brought me. Pieces whose proper home is an in-house newsletter, the appropriate section of a regional newspaper or one of those local gazettes that recently have sprung up. They could be sent to a national paper as a reader's letter, or enclosed in a box, offered as a whimsy with apologies tendered in advance.The epigrammatic poems he has been writing lately drip with oppressive gloom. I sit across from him, his face encased in the stricken skin of an old man. His lively eyes implore me, don't be harsh, judge the work kindly, leave him hope that he is bequeathing works of taste. We say nothing of this aloud but we both well know what is at stake here. He is putting his writings in order before departing this world and embarking on the long haul. He asks my opinion, yet hints that these are the things he intends to leave behind, the ones he wants me to compile for his memorial book. He points again and again to the epigrams on one line. Afterwards, we look for the exact Hebrew equivalent of the foreign word "epitaph."

"Deep despair pervades what you've written," I tell him. "As though your whole life didn't amount to anything, neither the kibbutz you built with your own hands nor the long years you sacrificed when you could have been living a scholar's life. What consolation are you offering me or leaving your readers? What comfort is there for you before you set out on the long haul?"

He points to a short poem scrawled in his own hand. I notice at once that some vowels are missing, others wrong. He apologizes for giving too little study to Hebrew and Judaism. Buber, old Martin Buber, had inspired him to immigrate as a boy. He did the rest on his own but never had the time to finish his required subjects. What were these minor vowel errors compared to what he had built? What were rebellious Hebrew words defying his aged hand compared to the orchards he had planted? To his surprise, his native language, in all its riotous vitality, had recently come back to him. He hungered for translations, made the trip to the library and then, after a period of many years, again read translations of the great poets he had loved as a boy.

In all of them, he had no trouble seeing the line that divided their poems. He wondered if it matched the line that divided their lives.  As though from a point where they had stopped for a moment in their course, they suddenly noticed another side of their lives, a fateful crossroads. Until then, they had made steady progress, modest but constant. In the period's final years, this progress leveled off. There are moments when you mistakenly believe that things will go on like this forever and ever. But no, you have made a small mistake, an optical illusion it seems to you at first. Later, when you sharpen your gaze, you can see what it really is: it's no optical illusion. Here is where the inevitable decline begins. The slope, like any slope, keeps getting steeper. It has its own gravity, which the first glance sometimes fails to reveal.

Here is where the difference appears between those who, yielding to the flow, race to the end unhindered, and those who believe that their lives are still in their hands, who delay their submission without realizing what is happening around them or understanding who is pulling them down on the long haul.
 

The translators, though diligent and skilled, simply missed this dividing line. This, one may say, is his private discovery. But he takes almost no pride in it, which is a pity, since it could completely change the meaning of the poems. Is it possible that they were so blind? Is it possible that they impatiently rushed to the end of the poems without realizing where the crossroads veered, the turning point of the poets' own lives? But he saw it, an old, old man whose keen mind's eye has not disappointed him. Not a single twisting curve has escaped him. No dust has gathered under him. Just as he did as a boy, he sat at his desk and squeezed some moments of illuminating translation out of his work time. It's nothing. Instead of ending his time writing tiresome letters to newspaper editors, he can produce fresh translations of the classic poetry that was the beacon of his youth before he immigrated. "You can't translate when you're young," he said with a weary smile. "You don't have the poet's broad view of life."
 

I find his words very depressing. They fuse unseen into my urge to throw things out. That is, even the books that I've loved and faithfully kept over all the years are destined for a second reading. Over them, too, hovers the danger of removal from the shelf. I'll need to pull out my drawers again and burn unimportant letters I have no interest in leaving behind. I'll need to go to the trouble again of depositing the few letters I value in the archives in Tel Aviv. But I'll have to be quick about it, or I'll change my mind and destroy those, too. The can I've set up in the garden for my bonfire is still there. My wife has often complained about the suffocating smoke filling our little room and the bits of ash which, carried by the wind, cover the lawn around our home, settle on the bushes and blacken the porch. One young man, a diligent worker at the factory who flew past my bonfire on his bike, said that I shouldn't use fire like a caveman. "Thank God we have much more modern equipment for getting rid of documents," he said. "Haven't you heard of high speed paper shredders? "

I return to the old translator. His fingers twist without rest. He has mixed up the folders placed before me. From the file marked "translations," I draw out occasional poems and epigrams that he published in the newspapers. From the file inscribed "miscellaneous," I take out impassioned translations of classical verse. I switch the files when he isn't looking. It would be a sin to embarrass him. He traveled a long, tiring road before reaching me and is getting ready for a trip much longer even than that. I have no right to disturb his plans even though his trembling hands and the skin peeling off his face make me want to cry out in protest, "Haven't you heard of a high speed shredder, gramps? Don't you hold out any hope? What will you tell your grandchildren when they ask?"

"Yes, that is my one hope," he answers me. "The babies, the little grandchildren. By all means, peek at the poems and see for yourself. They are my sole comfort, my last hope. They are just beginning the journey I am about to finish. My meager experience will go into the travel bag they'll sling over their backs. That is, indeed, my one consolation. A desperate, unflagging attempt to create a new man." Tears well up in his glowing eyes. Memories of his grandchildren come to him. He knew in his heart that the image of his grandchildren would go with him no matter how well he prepared himself for the long haul. It won't be easy to let go of them.

They are the sole comfort of his pitiful life, his one hope before he goes down the road of no return.
 

Their sweet voices anchor him to the spot. Their darling squeals leave him mute with happiness. Their laughter turns his legs to lead. Each memory of them adds an unforeseen weight to his body.
 

He sits silently before me. His hands, spread on the desk, have stopped their trembling. I, too, say nothing. I see that firm decisions are slowly dissolving. It seems that I still don't know everything. Even my own decision to ready myself to make the long haul may yet be changed.

(c) All rights reserved.

Between Arrival and Departure (Danny C. Sillada)

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

- Anais Nin

That gnawing, remote feeling of parting from someone close is more intense and haunting than the romantic encounter between two people. It is this lingering convulsion of loss when one begins to ruminate how a cherished encounter winds up to a rancorous end. Perhaps, if one had the capability to change the course of time, he or she would go back to the path where all the extraordinary encounters converge and happen.

But no one had the power to revert the irreversible certainty of departure from arrival and neither one could change or alter the inevitable processes and forces of nature.

Everything arrives and departs at a particular time and space of its respective existence. The rising and setting of the sun, for instance, paves the way for the coming of nightfall in the same manner, as dawn departs at the bursting of morning light from the eastern horizon.

 

Everything is subject to the tedious rhythms of coming and leaving, of entrance and exit, of birthing and dying, of hello and good bye... But in between these invincible rhythms, something ineffable takes place, something transcendent and indispensable than the reality of arrival and departure.

If only one could seize and live that ineffable in-between, then all arrivals and departures would conflate into a single entity of all that there is and what is to come. Everything becomes a defining moment of all encounters where beginning and ending are no longer consequential.

Departure becomes an encounter and arrival becomes the completion of a particular departure. One can find joy even in sadness, victory in defeat, kindness in ruthlessness, love in hatred, and so on and so forth...

And when that happens, utopia or heaven is no longer a distant aspiration to be dreamt and cherished, but an inch away from the human touch!

© Danny C. Sillada

"kofko in my hand" (Elisha Porat)

translated to the English by Alan Sacks

This morning, much to my surprise, I felt some of my strength of old return. The slight blurring of my vision, the side effect of a disorienting dizziness, eased as my medication relaxed its grip on me. Reinvigorated, Iapproached the bookcase, pulled out some of the tightly packed volumes and blew the dust from them. At last, exhausted, I held Kafka in my hands. Though it had been quite some time since I had turned to his works, he hadoften come to mind these past weeks. Now he was in my hands again, a small, hard-bound edition, with the Hebrew letters set in the old-fashioned type of Yeshuron Keshet and printed by Belet Gavshushi. Just a few days earlier, I heard the famous Czech poet,the one who would visit Israel one day, pronounce Kafka's name. Kafko, he said, and then again, Kafko. Suddenly, this alien ronunciation seemed to me just right, seven times better and a thousand times more faithful. It was, indeed, a significant change. I close my eyes and echo his voice for myself. Kafko or Kafka, Kafka versus Kafko. When the Czech poet intoned the name in his Slavic accented language, it sounded like Yosefko. Really, Yosefko, Yosko, Yoshko, Yoskof.

The name was terribly familiar to me, something I had known years ago, as though it had been printed on the kibbutz work roster of giant Bristol pages that could not be folded, pages so heavy they pulled out the tiny tacks holding them to the perforated wooden board. Yosek. K. Yoshko K. How easy it was to pronounce the name. I already liked Kofko, the new editions should print it Kafkoh and no other way. That is, the final vowel had to be embedded in the last consonant, but it was important that the suffix appear Hebrew and not western Slavic. Kahfkoh, which you could read as Kafkah or hear as Kafko, however the spirit moved you. A crackling good name that worked either way, two names suddenly merging, until I make a mistake and say, Yosef Kafka, thinking of his protagonist by that strange name instead of little Franz, which has simply escaped my memory.

There I stand at my bookcase, which exudes the aroma of damp wood. Kafko in my hand, I compose in my mind a letter to father. No version of this letter will ever be published. Kofko's writing, bewildering topic-switching prose, sets my teeth on edge. It sometimes resembles the fitful flight of some insect cautiously weaving 70 circles around an open flower. A lyrical turn occasionally flashes past in fear of an impending withdrawal. This is indeed timid writing, the sort that fears the direct approach. Here and there, a quick, direct sentence plucks up its courage and escapes. I fully expect that in the wake of this breach (on a small scale, of course, for he knows nothing of all-out attacks on his pages), occupation divisions will tramp forward to exploit the breakthrough, clean out the remaining outposts and establish a bridgehead.

But no. That is not for him. He instantly retreats to the safe shelter of the previous sentence. From there, he may sally forth in secret and once more try to reach his goal. His prose is self-defeating. Sentences imprison themselves within a multitude of bonds and bounds. It comes close to what they taught me in the army years and years ago. One foot on the ground and one in the air. While the pinning force seizes the commanding high ground, the assault unit scouts the enemy to surprise him in his trenches. Perhaps even this definition is not truly accurate. But what has accuracy to do with literature? One step forward and two steps back, that is how he fashions his advance. I pace before the book shelves, Kofko's book in my hand now open to the eye. We are writing the letter to father. Sentences race ahead, terrified, stooped, seeking shelter. With inexplicable courage, bold passages suddenly surge forth and whole columns are swept forward. The whole manuscript advances, an essay of black letters striking violently across the front until my heart skips a beat with some strange fear of sinking into a black morass. But I have nothing to fear. The first step forward has already been made. Now everything has come to a halt, pausing, scanning the terrain. It is as though Kafko himself has leapt from the page, taking the lie of the land and telling himself, whoa, too fast; the assault columns must be stopped. He is already planning his next move, a double step back. Once again, I am thrown far from the open heart of the wound.

Good, after the advances, we seat ourselves, the two of us, before father. There is a certain obscurity here, but I am in no rush to clear it up. Whose father is it before whom we sit? Little, scared Franzy, who slips the letter into the post box and takes to his heels - is it his father? Or does each of us face his own father, handing him the letter in person?

I remembered his stern face when I finished my days of punishment and was allowed back into the house. I was very sorry when he passed on and mourned him for a long time. I wondered how Kofko, writing his letter, would conduct himself, whether he would need to read an original, heartfelt eulogy while his father's coffin was lowered into the grave.

Prague, the city masked in Kofko's stories, was not destroyed in the great war. The house stands where it has always stood. The river flows past, the old bridges still. It all suddenly becomes clear. His mysteries are solved. Young, energetic Kafka, destined to grow as old as Methusaleh, was in the habit of plunging into the chilly waters of the river. According to his friends, who remembered what they saw there, he swam the river in swift strokes. In the evening, returning refreshed and bursting with vitality, he would mobilize his paper heroes for the astounding strategy he had devised. One step forward and two steps back.

Can the lead sentence deny all the sentences to follow? How is it possible that a single clause can open or bar seven gates? Where can he hide, the trembling boy seeking refuge from his father's wrath? I am reminded of a boy, a childhood friend, who once accidentally broke the key to his parents' apartment. That was in the new neighborhood. The chain fell to the floor while the broken key remained stuck in the hole. Sweating from head to toe in fright, he tried to draw the broken part from the door. When he finally succeeded, his whole body was shaking. He laid the broken key at the base of the door, as though it had fallen of itself and shattered on the floor. Even the crack he had tried to patch with spit could not be seen. He crawled into the garden on the slope of the lawn and crouched in the dark of the bushes until his parents returned from work. Only in the black of night did he dare to come out and present himself as someone who had traveled a great distance. In his absence, the mangled corpse of the key had been found on the porch. The air was thick with suspicion.

Of course, I am no seer when I dip into my memories. There is no limit to fear of a father's wrath. Even on a little kibbutz, a boy dreads the rage of an angry father returning home after a long day of work. He kicks the broken key and upbraids his wife who, as we recall from Kofko, is the beloved mother. "Ptui, ptui, ptui," he spits out. "Why, tell me why he has abused your precious `jewelry' again. Would it help to throw him out of the house for a few days? Maybe this time he'll learn how to behave?"

In my bed at the hospital, I drafted countless letters to father. What attracted me was the detached, remote nature of it, the opportunity to hide behind the other side of the composition, quite unlike the stories and poems I have written over the years. It is the yearnings laid bare and base desires that make a name for a piece. One can feel pain, even regret. In every important stage of my life, at every juncture, I have found myself facing him, composing my thoughts for him on a sheet of paper. On the one hand, I am glad he did not go through the terrible wars, worried sick for the safety of his children. On the other, I regret that he did not read my works or see his children grow up. I remember his final illness and my last visit to the hospital. It all comes back to me unexpectedly, the acrid odors, the hushed fears and panic-stricken voices.

"Give me another 10 years," I begged. "At least let me live as long as he did." I bargained passionately with the giver of life and death. I was not ashamed to mix in some tears.

Of course, I am no seer when I dip into my memories. There is no limit to fear of a father's wrath. Even on a little kibbutz, a boy dreads the rage of an angry father returning home after a long day of work. He kicks the broken key and upbraids his wife who, as we recall from... Who, Kofko? In his own demented way, he would throw a wild party one evening to free the household of a tyrannical father's yoke. It may be that as he steps forward, he breaks out in a drunken monologue of which the principal subject is the purpose of going forth in liberty. But little Franz instantly comes to and loses his nerve. With two steps back, he flings himself, wracked with longing, on the memory of the dearly departed, on the happy days of his childhood with his father and the simple, quiet pleasure of their home warm against the cold and rain of a European winter.

In the end, in that twisted way of his, he would spit, "ptui, ptui, ptui," berating his mother and sister so these slow-witted women, these stupid loved ones, would grasp at last just who it was they were bound to serve from then to the end of their days.