The Book of Life: Selected Jewish Poems, 1979–2011

Who Saves a Life: Poem Beginning witha Line by Fitzgerald/Hemingway

45 Who Saves a Life: Poem Beginning with a Line by Fitzgerald/Hemingway The very rich are different from us, they Have more money, fewer scruples. The very Attractive have more lovers, the very sensitive Go mad more easily, and the very brave Distress a coward like myself, so listen Scott, listen Ernest, and you also can Listen, Walt Whitman. I understand the large Language of rhetoricians, but not the large Hearts of the heroes. I am reading up. I want someone to tell me what solvent saves Their cardiac chambers from sediment, what is The shovel that cuts the sluice Straight from the obvious mottoes, such as Love Your neighbor as yourself, or I am human, therefore Nothing human is alien, to the physical arm In the immaculate ambassadorial shirtsleeves —We are in Budapest, 44—that waves Off the muddy Gestapo in the railroad yard With an imperious, an impatient flourish, And is handing Swedish passports to anonymous Yellow-starred arms reaching from the very boxcars That are packed and ready to glide with a shrill 46 Whistle and grate on steel, out of the town, Like God’s biceps and triceps gesturing Across the void to Adam: Live. In Cracow A drinking, wenching German businessman Bribes and cajoles, laughs and negotiates Over the workers, spends several times a fortune, Saves upward of a thousand Jews, including One he wins at cards, whom he sets to work In his kitchenware factory. A summer twilight Soaks a plateau in southern France, the mountains Mildly visible, and beyond them Switzerland, As the policeman climbs from the khaki bus To Le Chambon square, where the tall pastor Refuses to give names of refugees; Meanwhile young men slip through the plotted streets, Fan out to the farms—it is 42— So that the houses empty and the cool woods fill With Jews and their false papers, so that the morning Search finds no soul to arrest. It happens Over and over, but how? The handsome Swede Was rich, was bored, one might have said. The pastor Had his habit of hugging and kissing, and was good At organizing peasants, intellectuals, And Bible students. The profiteer intended 47 To amass wealth. He did, lived steep, and ended Penniless, though the day the war ended, The day they heard, over the whistling wireless, The distant voice of Churchill barking victory As the Russians advanced, his Schindlerjuden Still in the plant, still safe, as he moved to flee, Made him a small present. Jerets provided His mouth’s gold bridgework, Licht melted it down, Engraved the circle of the ring with what One reads in Talmud: Who saves a single life, It is as if he saved the universe; and Schindler The German took it; he wears it in his grave; I am reading up on this. I did not know Life had undone so many deaths. Now go And do likewise snaps every repercussion Of my embarrassed heart, which is like a child Alone in a classroom full of strangers, thinking She would like to run away. Let me repeat, Though I do not forget ovens or guns, Their names: Raoul Wallenberg, Oskar Schindler, André Trocmé. Europe was full of others As empty space is full of burning suns; Not equally massive or luminous, Creating heat, nevertheless, and light, 48 Creating what we may plausibly write Up as the sky, a that without which nothing; We cannot guess how many, only that they Were subject to arrest each bloody day And managed. Maybe it’s like the muse, incalculable, What you can pray in private for. Or a man You distantly adore, who may someday love you In the very cave of loneliness. We are afraid— Yet as no pregnant woman knows beforehand If she will go through labor strong, undrugged, Unscreaming, and no shivering soldier knows During pre-combat terror who will retreat, Who stand and fight, so we cannot predict Who among us will risk the fat that clings Sweetly to our own bones— None sweeter, Whitman promises— Our life, to save doomed lives, and none of us Can know before the very day arrives. ...