Klezmer

By RICHARD CHESS

Daughter of a butcher, grandson of a wagon
     twin of the new moon—that’s who this music is

though it was tortured, shot, drowned, gassed, butchered
though its gold teeth were extracted, its smile ironed out
though its legs—how it danced from village to village to village
     with the rebbe in its arms—were broken
though its crystal was smashed, its baby tossed into the air to see if it really
          was a miracle
though there was a corner where it liked to meet
     in the afternoon to smoke and consider the news
          and women passing by
     before the women were shrunk to regulation sizes
     before the news was a colossal darkness
     before the smoke was all there was to eat
it didn’t die, it didn’t refuse to die, it didn’t resist—it wasn’t that brave
     or dumb—it didn’t offer its body for experimentation
     it didn’t collaborate, it just didn’t stop
     wheezing and rattling—breathing!

listen to the accordion, how even with that guy squeezing the air
     out of it it still sings

listen to the clarinet, that delight—

related to mud up goes down into a well and rises again, its face
     shining and sharp

at night, late, especially on the Sabbath
     we make shofar noises
early the next morning, too, before the mall
     awakens, a little groggy
an obscene and proud screw of sound
     coming from a Volkswagen that the ghost of our mother
spits on and blesses

it lives on air, the way poor musicians do (though that fiddler
     owns a posh condominium overlooking the Mediterranean)
it rides with birds and hail and light, its traveling companions
          —it’s stopped at the border, it crosses—

maybe you hear it for the first time at the bar mitzvah of a neighbor’s child
maybe you hear it for the first time on public radio, Chanukah,
     and you cry to your husband, chewing nails in front of the tv,
     the oil burns at the darkest hour of the year!

or maybe you hear it on stage, under a tent—
     your grandparents paid for the tickets
     and no one, not the wife or kids or your own pastel mother
     reminds you that your grandparents—just atoms now—
     were raised in South Philly on Mummers

or maybe you hear it in an alley in Safed, Israel
     as it weeps from the window of a lover’s loft, a mystic or
          artist there
in the afternoon, the hours when the study house is quiet, gallery locked,
     the sky yogurt blue, same as the color of the headstones of giants of
          Kabbalah
     buried on the hillside just below your stroll

or maybe you’ve never heard it, not in your neighborhood
     meditation hall, courtroom or spa
not where you roll a cart with trays of food down a hall

or dip a wick in melted wax or squat in pain at the top of the stairs
or spit cherry pits into grass or sign a will in the presence of three
     witnesses

today klezmer is still being scraped from weeds and blown
     from windows of 5,000 destroyed villages

it’s history in a spoon, it’s our limp
it’s the first language of our home, you could say
     if your food wasn’t the hoagie
     if you weren’t born with henna-colored palms
     in a village where goat roasts and musicians,
     not to violate the orthodox Muslim ban
     on musical instruments, bang on gasoline
     cans and brass tea trays, Yemenite soul

still the cry, still the crowd
     dipping, twirling, beating, smoking—
in a barn, study house, social hall, tables
     slammed aside
thousands under a July sky stepping up and
     down on a lawn

—can you keep up with mother’s moods?—outrage, sorrow—
but mother, this is a wedding, we’re supposed to be happy
     pleads the clarinet, this is the Messiah
     we’re chuckling about here

Excerpted from Chair in the Dessert by Richard Chess, and reprinted by permission of the University of Tampa Press.