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John F McCullagh Dec 2014
The year was nineteen forty six, the memories still raw,
Europe’s Jews were still encamped as they had been before.
True, they now had food to eat and decent clothes to wear,
But in that Displaced Persons camp, little else to spare.

When Lilly told her fiancé about her dream one night;
her standing beneath the chuppah in a flowing gown of white,
Ludwig promised Lilly that her vision would come true,
but in a displaced person’s camp that might be hard to do.

A former Luftwaffe pilot proved an angel in disguise;
Ludwig traded, for his parachute, some coffee and supplies.
Miriam, the seamstress, swore to do her best
to fashion the silk parachute into a wedding dress.

Some miles from Bergen Belsen lies the little town of Celle
Its desecrated synagogue would serve the couple well.
They made an Aron Kodesh from a kitchen cabinet
A Rabbi, flown from England, would officiate their fete.


Lilly’s gown was beautiful, the bride felt like a Queen
Within the battered synagogue, her wedding matched her dream.
Miriam’s creation would be worn by many more;
Girls from camp made brides in white that year after the war.

The Gown’s in a museum now, the bride now old and gray.
She lives nearby in Brooklyn in a house down by the bay.
Her lovely great granddaughter, her loving heart’s delight,
now has the dream of being wed in a gown of flowing white.
Lilly's gown is now in the Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C.
AS Jun 2011
I thought I saw my sister
outside the window,
carrying Tel Aviv in her mouth.
Making a bracha with her teeth,
grinding poems and hair,
her jaw opened up and showed the world
boiling behind her molars.
My Vishnu sister, made of words, needing none.
Little and towheaded I’used to pick hair after hair from
my scalp to see what I thought
was a piece of brain at the end.
Sitting in the backyard,
eating fistfuls of grass, ripping bundles of yellow
What you feel is
irrelevant, but
What you taste is
holy
shabbos kodesh
salty mouth dirt
sister mother
yellow tufts of mind
אני יכול לזכור...I can remember

I.

in the ashes of Auschwitz
February 2018 / Shevat 5778
there exists no
kol hachavvyot,
the Infinite One bring/ing
all of reality into be-ing.

there is no 'ehyeh 'asher 'ehyeh
who formed Light,
who created Darkness.

II.

the candles of the Vanished
World are no longer
sown in the seasons of breath.

in 1920 Vilna, Yehu'dit bones
were excavated for horses
to be buried,
all by the tongue of a priest
covered in ambergris.

in 2018 Cyberia alleys,
the malefactor mime cries
as Long Island parhelia
flicker in the seasonal
ice around his little girls.

III.

the cypress of the
Kingdom of Night are
amidst natz'ri house gardens,
marking in the mouths of
opus dei children the straws
of Poland.

long after midnight we seek
solace in One-Eyed Paritus's
Meditations obliques,
where Sol Nazerman's
zoharic midrashim of
Shabtai Zisel are
narrated by Claude Lanzmann.

the quantum nonlocality
of the corpse of
ha'Kodesh Barukh hu
is the Hollerith tracking
number.

IV.

Nach uraltem, aengstlich beheutetem
Klostergeheimnis lernen selbst Greise
muehelos Kavier spielen.
-- Max Ernst

this is to the memories z"l of
Rod Steiger 14 April 1925-9 July 2002
Roman Vischniac 19 August 1897-22 January 1990
Rose Leamel Ziebell (1933-2007)
Dottie Sutton (1922-2015)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
© 3 February 2018 / 18 Shevat 5778

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
STEPHAN PICKERING / חפץ ח"ם בן אברהם
Torah אלילה Yehu'di Apikores / Philologia Kabbalistica Speculativa Researcher
לחיות זמן רב ולשגשג...לעולם לא עוד
THE KABBALAH FRACTALS PROJECT
לעולם לא אשכח

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