The Dybbuk

For A. S.

Informed my father had for years maintained

My seat beside him in the schule,

I said he would have felt a perfect fool,

Knowing that I had learned. Yet in

My gratitude, and pledged against his con-

gregation's host of malicious tongues,

I saw myself the stranded child again,

The velvet-cushioned dunce, and had

No choice but to resolve again to pray

That child away.

The synagogue's

Low light fell on that seat where Father'd kept

His image of his son, as though

To guard it from his Atheist-of-the-World.

Again the child rose by his side,

And back and forth began to sway-stiff little

Bows in frantic imitation-

Watching its elder's eyes to find the place.

Each time their eyes would meet, the child

Convulsed its lips toward every shape, faking

The foreign sounds at quickened pace.

Hold on! I cried, fixing the youngster with

A spurious eye, Your legs in pain,

Mouth parched, your mind by language raped, my strength

Be yours to see it out in a

Cool rage at old men kissing silk and laugh

At the ram's-horn retching to find

A sound for doubt! The child drew near the man

And burned its gaze into the text

And would not let me in. Now, at thirteen,

I saw and heard it sing-

Sweeter than it had ever sung or since

And words as meaningless as ever-

Yet, when our eyes met in the crowd, raucous

Above the catered plates,

And it beseeched of me one look to say

How badly it had sung,

And by that look be put at ease, I smiled

Among the Pharisees. Looking

Again, I saw the low light fall

Upon the empty seat and scuttled out.

Under a lamp I stood

And said my father's name with love, with love

For what he did not know and what

I had now learned. In the dark street I stood

And would not let

What had followed me in rage back through the aisle

Inside my bones again;

But let it stamp and spit like a rattled child

And search my eye in vain

To enter whence it came.