Ruth Daigon
Tenant
Like an ideal tenant
the bullet fits precisely in the wound,
closer than a friend,
a relative, a lover.
Removing it, what can we
give the body in exchange
to accommodate it
half so well?
Always the unexpected caller,
it only sleeps with strangers,
never fails to find the perfect host,
and it in turn
becomes the perfect guest
bringing no gift but itself,
demanding nothing. Lying
cradled in the flesh,
never struggling to emerge,
cushioned in that hollow
as if it knew each curve,
it wraps itself in silence.
This poem previously appeared online in Lynx: Poetry from Bath.
Rwanda, Kosovo, Guatemala, Iraq, Bosnia....
Check the wiring
Unplug the shriek
Listen to the steel-wool voice
of the box poised in the kitchen
Leash your doubts
with little grins
yawns
nods of the head
Remove your glasses
Cough
Adjust the paper flower in your button hole
Become shut spring smooth rock
as explosions
grow nearer and louder
Although bulletins are printed
in another language
broadcasts scrambled
news gets here just the same
and death grows a richer crop each year
Cultural Event
(Arbeit Macht Frei)
Our season tickets stamped on our arms,
we sit among the perfumed furs and patent leather
in our striped uniforms, waiting.
Footlights glow. She appears.
Opening chords lift off
like birds flying backwards.
Long skeins of sound
wrap loosely around listeners.
Phrases gleam brighter than
searchlights on prison towers.
Bist du bei mir, gehe ich mit Freude,
zum Sterben und zu meiner Ruh
(Bach)
High notes strict as flames
in burning synagogues
singe us in our seats.
Her burnished voice,
her tempos locked in marrow,
the even rhythm of her breath
moves us toward the showers.
Wenn die Lieb aus deinem blauen
hellen, offnen Augen zieht.....
(Mozart)
She sings of spring melting shards of winter,
of summer burning along branches,
of seeds spiraling to earth
as light as babies falling in slow motion
into soft beds of soil.
Guten Abend, gute Nacht
mit Röslein gedacht....
(Brahms)
The texture of her voice
rubbed smooth by each new season.
Ours grown thin as parchment.
Now, she carves sound out of
a country of bare surfaces
where we pound rocks into pebbles
paving roads to Treblinka,
Buchenwald.
And when she sings of love
hidden circuits warm our bodies
packed in vats of ice.
Mein Mädchen hat einen Rosen Mund
und wer sie küsst der wirdt gesund...
(Brahms)
The audience rises with applause,
the stage buried in bouquets.
She bows.
But from somewhere in the wings,
a voice hums lullabies of barbed wire
and the string quartet rests between numbers
waxing their bows
Ruth Daigon was editor of Poets On: for twenty years until it ceased publication. She won "The Eve of St. Agnes Award" (Negative Capability) 1993, and was runner-up in 1994. She's been widely published: Shenandoah, Negative Capability, Poet & Critic, Kansas Quarterly, Alaska Quarterly, Atlanta Review, Poet Lore, Tikkun....Internet "E" zines include Ariga, Crania, Cross Connect, Zuzu's Petals, Switched On Gutenberg, Recursive Angel.... also Poet-Of-The- Month on The University of Chile's Pares Cum Paribus (an "E" chapbook in English and Spanish) Web Del Sol (a chapbook of her work that appears permanently on the WEB) Her latest poetry collection is Between One Future And The Next (Papier-Mache Press) 1995. About A Year (Small Poetry Press in 1996), Gale Research published her autobiography in their "Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, 1997" and she won the Ann Stanford Poetry Prize, 1997 (University of Southern California).