At four A.M. I dreamed myself on that beach
where we’ll take you after you’re born.
I woke in a wave of blood.
Lying in the back seat of a nervous Chevy
I counted the traffic lights, lonely as planets.
Starlings stirred in the robes of Justice
over the Town Hall. Miscarriage of justice,
they sang, while you, my small client,
went curling away like smoke under my ribs.
Kick me! I pleaded. Give me a sign
that you’re still there!
Train tracks shook our flesh from our bones.
Behind the hospital rose a tree of heaven.
You can learn something from everything,
a rabbi told his Hasidim who did not believe it.
I didn’t believe it, either. O rabbi,
what did you learn on the train to Belsen?
That because of one second one can miss everything.
There are rooms on this earth for emergencies.
A sleepy attendant steals my clothes and my name,
and leaves me among the sinks on an altar of fear.
“Your name. Your name. Sign these papers,
authorizing us in our wisdom to save the child.
Sign here for circumcision. Your faith, your faith.”
O rabbi, what can we learn from the telegraph?
asked the Hasidim, who did not understand.
And he answered, That every word is counted and charged.
“This is called a dobtone,” smiles the doctor.
He greases my belly, stretched like a drum,
and plants a microphone there, like a flag.
A thousand thumping rabbits! Savages clapping for joy!
A heart dancing its name, I’m-here, I’m-here!
The cries of fishes, of stars, the tunings of hair!
O rabbi, what can we learn from a telephone?
My shiksa daughter, your faith, your faith
that what we say here is heard there.