d. a. levy and the Cleveland Jewish Counterculture of the 1960s

“Levy was perhaps the most self-consciously Jewish poet of his milieu, his promise and agonies not only those of the 1960s counter culture but also of an unrecalcitrant [sic], prophetic Judaism seeking its destiny.” Paul Buhle

“cleveland I gave you/most of my words & my time/and you laughed”

d. a. levy

NEW YEAR When I was six years old we dipped apple slices & bread In honey touched small glasses of wine & sed “to life”   “to life” that was the only time my father ever hit me his eyes were very sad & he sort of walked away knowing he was wrong or that he couldnt reach me i dont think he knew who I was perhaps even asking if i was really his son that was 1948—it is now 1968 and i know he is watching a football game on television in another city—his grey hair     his sad eyes and he is probably still wondering if i am really his son what father wants to admit that his son really is a “poet” i think I was ten when i asked the difference between christians & jews and his reply was “the jews think jesus was a bastard” he was wrong again the jews believe in living, the Christians believe in jesus and have formed a death cult around his image a cult dedicated to suffering & love as a means of liberation the jews know, that one becomes liberated thru living, not only thru programmed acts of masochism or blindness it was sometime afterward my father and i went to a temple to hear the services   sat down in time   to hear that haunting language for just a moment when someone told us we had to stand in the back—we had chosen “reserved seats” seats that had been paid for we left & it was thus i completed my external jewish education my father was right we never visited another temple & now i wonder how many jews are destroyed in this country each year my father with his lonely eyes trying to return home only to have the american god of money slapped in his face when we left it was as if he passed the message on to me “there are no jews left in this place”

and I spent years trying to fill in that hungry space denied me

on holidays i did not know about i found myself thinking of the old man and later trying to remember what i dreamt when i was a child i kept discovering his quietness   when did the first images   appear in my head? “a place with sand where it was warm the blue sky—strange trees”   my fathers eye had never turned from Israel i don’t even know if he knew what was inside his own head

once visiting hillel house i was told about keeping traditions alive   lighting candles

the secrets i learned from my father? how does one pass them on?   my fathers terrible eyes   the loneliness   flesh phrases like   “genetic memory”

this poem? that I remember once being free to walk through all secret doors to walk with a free people

where did I learn that

when I think of my father I wonder if he can hear me

this poem? for my father who will someday be reborn in Israel & this poem that I may once again be his son & the name we carry was once a name to be proud of

now it is new years 1968 in a barbarian country that has always felt alien to me

while blind men struggle to keep traditions alive

my father watches football games on television to pass time & I dream of his sad eyes and I wonder about those blind men do they ever wonder who wrote their fucking traditions for them?

what songs will be sung in israel for the young jews beaten or murdered in the south trying to keep alive the internal spirit

what songs will be sung in israel to remember the young jews who took...