Papir iz dokh vays

Papir iz dokh vays

un tint iz dokh shvarts.

Tsu dir, mayn zis lebn,

tsit dokh mayn harts!

Paper is still white

and ink is still black.

To you, my sweet,

my heart still pulls!

Yiddish Wedding Song

Outside, in this night, the birches are white,

reaching up from the earth still and black,

dark as the blood which clouds my heart,

and slowly floods my sex.

I hear you singing the wedding song so aching,

here where we first confessed~~

two fresh blushing girls, sweet-smiling and shaking,

holding hands beneath this bar, in secret,

so long

so long

so long

in the past.

I didn’t know I’d see you.  I only stopped for a drink.

A klezmer band clad in khaki and Birkies,

with violin, clarinet & soft drums, start up a waltz

and on stage you appear, outré as ever,

your fire red hair curled above white shoulders

in blue satin, strapless, with a doll’s pink bow

trailing down your gown, you begin singing.

You sing to me, I think as I swing my sweet orange slice around

circling my foggy summer beer, a tall Oberon.

But that’s the trick of the stage, in the spotlight, 

straight ahead you gaze and into my heart without seeing.

I want to tell someone at the bar,

“You see that girl? She once was mine.”

But I sit alone and wonder if that was true,

as if I had possessed you, as if I could.

I had the desire, and so did you,

but we slipped through it, that wedding dance,

luminous moonlit breasts and kisses,

crepe lantern roses, so quickly eclipsed.

At the end of the song you come down

and drape your arm around another.

My heart drops, too.  I cannot face the loss

of the love that had seemed the answer.

I’d let it go, that question, I thought,

I’d made peace with what was empty.

I’d painted you as my dream girl,

but I soon saw the cracks, the ways we’d never match.

You were wise enough to end it, saying,

“I love you too much to offer you less

than you deserve.”  It was true It was true

But, tonight, I cannot face it.

Tonight, I kiss the dark arches of dripping branches,

sigh the sidewalk air home,

& listen very softly as my crowded heart breaks
quietly

all alone.