Archives

Archives

(Anna Margolin, pseudonym of Rosa Lebensboym)

Your life in folders, foldersArranged in boxes,Now I can see who you were.

Early missives from Dvoyre-Leye, in Brisk-de-Lite,Began, "My dear, beloved

Daughter, Rosa, may you beBlessed with health and luck."Spelling months the Russian way

In Yiddish, she chided youYear after year forNot writing. Affectionate

Notes from your father, and oneInked on sheets like sand,Post-marked Palestine, signed, "M.,"

Commanding you in script likeTeeth gritted to comeBack now, immediately

To the child you deserted.Twenty years laterThat son wrote Hebrew, misspelled

English, telling you when hisBirthday was, tellingThat he'd married, asking you

To send a picture to showHis son and twentyDollars a month to study

Agriculture in Naples.Did you answer him?Your second husband, Hersh Leib,

Primped—officious and tidy—On letterhead snitchedFrom the office. He never

Called you Rosa; his nicknamesShrank you—ketsele,Zis-nisele—Kittycat

Mewing, Sweet Peanut waitingTo be gobbled up.You replied in neat syntax

The first half-page. By the timeYou turned it over,Demons drove your pencil-point,

Spinning the sheet upside-down.You zigzagged marginsWith rage beyond endearment.

Your third husband wrote sanelyTo you, poet toPoet, and you answered him

In kind for thirty-two years,Even after yourPoems had stopped, and you had

Stopped leaving the house,Enormous and sick.He wrote to you the night you

Died. His pencil trembled onThe page—I cannotBear to read—his script weeping

To you as you turned away.Stone, pine box, ashes—You cupped fire in your bare hands.