Twilight Passages
Death poems
by
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I mourn each passing hour, each falling leaf. And every house mouse I have to bury in the woods, the pet turtle run over on Mill road. I mourn the Japanese maple eaten to the ground by a young deer, the passing a woman and her daughter I never knew in the Russian house around the corner, the down syndrome twins who died at thirty. I mourn all of my losses by standing still and rigid at my northern window. Mostly I mourn my inability to weep. The Dead are helpless at the hands of the living who forget. They retaliate by relentlessly invading dreams. Stand in line to demand their dues Some viciously like Uri, the street’s bully who still has a satisfied smirk as when he beat me up. Or Marsha who bursts out laughing when I cried. Some are gentler like my parents who remind me of a bitter childhood, nights of asthma attacks, of unpaid loans. The dead are not helpless. They control us with nightmares and day scares, come at us with vengeance when we let down our guard. The living are at the feet of the dead, and pleading for mercy. Soldiers Slanted rain blesses the dead soldiers in the potato fields by washing the grease and black soil off their faces. Assures them it will come back soon to bury them. But the rain has urgent tasks In northlands, leaves them to be crushed by tanks. Wars ravage the potato fields for months, rain and wind come back for skeletons, carry them carefully to the river for proper burial. Stumble on the way, the bones scatter on banyan roots.
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About the Book
The Yiddish writer Moyshe Leyb Halpern wrote, in his poem Momento Mori, “And should Moyshe-Leyb, the poet, say / That he saw Death… /Just as he sees himself in the mirror… / Will they believe Moyshe-Leyb?” These poems by Hanoch Guy-Kaner may occasion a like incredulity. After all, if, as Wittgenstein asserted, “Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death,” then what about the contending, equally experiential statement by Rebbe Bunam of Przysucha about himself that “All my life I have been learning how to die”? Hanoch Guy-Kaner does not care to explain or reconcile the seeming paradox----if there is one, or even to prefer one assertion to the other. Himself a poet, like Moyshe-Leyb, he too sees his long-familiar neighbor, Death, just as he sees himself in the mirror. Thus these poems, each of them a momento vitae, are each a kind of self-portrait as well. And as with late Rembrandt self-portraits, these poems too, in the words of John Berger, “contain or embody a paradox: they are clearly about old age, yet they address the future. They assume something coming toward them apart from Death.” A “something” which he, the poet, sees already, remembers already (and for which, it would seem, Death itself is the mirror). But will they believe Hanoch Guy-Kaner? “Death stands behind you On the supermarket long line As other unexpected events” Robert Margolis We dread it. We avoid thinking about it but it is present all the time. The poems in this book are explorations of the unknowable and nightmares. The poet pulls veils from what is beyond but so close and tangible for a journey like no other in which we call upon angels.spirits and souls. We visit heaven and hell and hope to enter though the gate of mercy. HGK
About the Author
Dr. Hanoch Guy Ph.D,Ed.D spent his childhood and youth in Israel He is a bilingual poet in Hebrew and English, Hanoch has taught Jewish Hebrew literature in Temple University, poetry and mentoring at the Muse house center. He won awards in the Mad Poets Society, phila poets Poetry super high way and first prize in Better than Starbuck haiku. His book Terra Treblinka is a finalist in the North book contest, Hanoch published poems in England,Wales,Israel US and Greece. He is the author of eight poetry collections in English,one Hebrew book.Dr. Guy roots in Judaism, his interest in mystical traditions as well as his openness to the unknown and mysterious created this book.