Memories Are a House

Stars by the power of their orbit

are stars in the order of the sun.

But if they are not figures of orbit,

they are not in the sun.

Exactly like me: by the power of my yearnings   

I am in the family.

And if I will not yearn,

I am not in the family.

Memories are a house.

Time is a roof. All the time a roof. All the time time.

I would like sometime to die

unto them and see them.

Benno Rothenberg related

that when he saw some archaeology,

he had a feeling of

homeland. As if he were in his house.

I do not deny that a man who reaches a certain age

can no longer hope

that those from whom he came will remain

still alive with him, as my mother once

wrote to me in one of the letters   

of her twilight. From the fadings of her letters

into the fatedness of man: But when can they.   

After all there's no chance of seeing you.

And once, in a discarded and forgotten letter:

"Good night, Yehiel alter lebn. Slumber has descended upon me.

I am caught in the throes of sleep. Khbin

shlayferig gevorn." Said in a letter that nobody reads, that nobody read.

—February 8, 1989