Afikomens, and: on "Afikomens"

for Harvey Shapiro

New York City

Later, when we gave up talking about ruins,about the demons who made themand the contributory demons in ourselves,I felt a need to note how much I missedwhat I had barely made an effort to see.How one day, some months after the event,and with no heed to what might be therein the eye's corner, I crossed Sixth Avenue,head turned downtown. I was looking southto where the towers had been. And suddenly,all that unblocked sky was a reminder to me.                     Imagesflooded back as though I were looking througha kind of window between buildings, a window between souls, an opening that might lead meto the Jewish god, or at least to that placewhere one could imagine His presence,where one might even place the prohibited idolor graven image, something to bump up against,to bow down to, to fill the space.

Beyond zero

According to Rosenzweig,God has removed himselfto the point of nothingness.And according to me, mankind,has been removing itself as well,unsure of its mode, unsure of its path—back to the trilobite or fated to remake the planetin the image of a grand, blinding supernova.But I do know the one I love in the singularhas taken on an existence beyond the pointof any somethingness, more like the tastebefore an aftertaste. I'm at least one step removedfrom that removed God. How to explain it?When I move my arm out to hold her handor to touch her on the shoulder,she has already moved with me.

Hyponatremia

The nurse said, there's no end of depth to plain water, meaning that water was, chemically, bottomless, that there were no salts to cling to, to exchange—and so, with each sip, one slipped deeper into its pure blue-white abyss, until a seizure occurred, and the body shook for a few moments as though in a wild propitiatory dance that signaled surrender or the invoking of the void. It was the body then, the body curled up like a fetus guarding the very last of its sodium, its potassium, those elements, as marked in the periodic table, those bonds that chain us to the universe.

Hungary

The monuments to the warriors riseabove the profiles of the Buda hills.They punch a hole in the sky, whether seen from Pest or from the Bridge of Chains.At night, a spotlight shines on a glitteringbronze sword or a helmet carved of stone.The light punches a hole in the darknessover Hungary. In the National Museum,the next to last room is devotedto the Holocaust and the Nazis.A dull lamp illuminates the dusty exhibits,as though a diaphanous, obscuring clothwere thrown over its glass caseswith their atrocious artifacts, matte blackas the night of time itself, sucking upthe otherwise bright light of a national history.

Mon coeur mis a nu

I was born in Brooklyn, lived on Pulaskibetween DeKalb and Throop.Odd place to learn about Baudelaire'sthree great types: warrior, poet and saint.But my father was in the National Guardand in '43 marched up our block in khakis,a thin black holster belt across his chest.He was packing a .45. And at night, playing cardswith his buddies, he'd call up the corner delifor a dozen pastrami sandwiches, sours and the works,moaning into the phone how sick he was, how all alone he was—his friends tittering in the background—could someone pleasedeliver the food to the house? To my mother, he was a savior,a saint, throwing away a fortune to help her through her heart trouble,to keep her safe. And to my grandfather, Rabbi Zalman Heller,he was a dime-a-dozen bum, an apostate, running away to seawhen he was only fifteen. Later, he made movies in South Florida.The production company went bust fast, as did his real estate agency.He wrote poetry.

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