english

Selection of English Poems
Schulamith Chava Halevy

Contents
El Lumbroso
Asking
Santa Teresa
Exposure
Sanctum Sanctorum
Primeval Bloods
Stolen Blessings
Soon
Your Reflection in my Mirror
The Violet that Never Was
The Music of Parting
Bertha's Return
Migration
Chant
7 Adar
Release
When Spirits
All your Gales Silently

El Lumbroso

(in honor of Luis de Carvajal el Mozo)

That night I was so radiant
You could barely see me for my light.
Now in the incandescent dawn
I am paraded before your helpless eye.
The stakes are high
enough for me to see my angel cry.
Padre Contreras, frail and vulnerable
Murmurs why?
Heark! the flames' voice is cracking
Hear them sigh...
My flesh imploding in the fire
Together we witness it reduce to ashes
Together watch it fly.
You and I,
How we danced ever closer to the flames
--to my flesh, to its demise
Your old soul knows I could not die,
but your mind is young,
Cannot yet read the milestones of the sky.
Cloistered in my afterglow
Shawled in me
You stood in prayer
That the light I have become
Be bestowed
Upon you.
My apparition soars
Carried in your dreams.
Four hundred years in the abyss
Cannot erase
the seal
our memories
call
I can still embrace
can enter you
Breathe my eternity into your soul.

Asking

Asking to understand
What for
the hope you sowed in me
what for
the defeat
Whose
(was is Yours?)
the hand that
squeezed my womb
rhythmically
Curls of tissue
twitch at my feet
like poppies in the rain
bright red fragments of loss
in my tub-full of pain
slowly spin
drain.
Asking to be
cleansed.

Santa Teresa

How you shudder on my skin.
What scenes from our past
remain sealed in
you, what roots still not
starved?
Pine trees and
sunflower patches
and olive groves
embrace me now
-- the meadows of your life
Yellow hills -- pure skies.
What visions of Jerusalem
-- the skirts of Galilee
flow still through your blood?
What voices came from the hereafter
to distill your tears?
*
Alone with your secrets.
What refuge could the masses
offer your tormented soul?
What sanctity could you be seeking
in the shrines of Sheol.
When they called
you Santa,
Teresa,
did your
shame cry
Temple whore?
*
Who knew your bed of vows
In musty stonewalled nights
What is it that you conjure in your dreams?
Faces
hands, blades
a hellish phosphorous glow
sow evil in your flesh
Now disappearing under habit.
What did you do
with the horrors
Teresa
when you tired
Light some candles
chase the bats
that keep calling in the
belfry
Your childhood pillaged by the roadside...
How many forms of rape
brought you here
Hermanita?
*
Bleeding blades of grass
why did the angel tarry?
What remains
of the innocence that was
where can you go from here
Teresa de Jesus?
Fast you wed yourself to them
Till death doth part.
Then you created an order
what order did you have
to whom did you entrust
your truth?
Vengeance you sought
from deep within
-- measure for measure
but the halo festered round you.
But a step there was between you and death
(why did the angel come?)
But the halo bore its glow in you like leprosy
ashes of autos in Avila's air
No water to cleanse you.
*
Now you cloister yourself
in the dragon's lair?
lock and barrel
vanquished you kneel
alone you weep.
Who might comprehend
the depth of your torment
In the dungeons of your grief
secretly you mend your rents
embroider for yourself
new angel wings.
*
Tormented descalza
with your dozen sisters
and Juan de la Cruz
your confidante,
confessor.
Though not over the Law of Moses
you are always suspect
all your loves oppressed, hermana
all your loves oppressed.
Juan de la Cruz
himself a New Christian
takes your hand into his
whispers about
the black night which
would purge your soul
and how in the end
El-Señor
will redeem.
*
What Hebrew name were you given
Santa Teresa de Avila
What name did your mother whisper in your ear
about whom did she sing ballads
through chilling childhood eves?
Many days you tormented your flesh
neither bread nor water
seeking mending for other torments
ever waning
Many days you agonized over the
voices that ceased calling
how would you plead you people's case
before the king of kings?
And so did your maidens fast
all twelve
Tears and supplication
Do you still remember, Esterika
how your mother sang to you about
the queen of anusim
Oh violated flesh and spirit
did you toil in vain for
an Iberian Purim?
*
El Dia Grande
Behold the friars
set out on their Devil's dance
like ravens in hunt
they close in on your people.
Prostrate before the Icon
what whips your spirit
you must hide
from the Crucified
looming over you
Hush! your cries
must not leave your lips.
Kol Nidrei
Santa Teresa of Avila
Sister in bondage
the Lord of the Hebrews will come
to release you from all your vows.

Exposure
In the caverns of my past
you are ensconced
sorceress
lighting your wicks
of witchcraft
to the cellars of my youth
conjuring visions
of my world
overturned.
Black owl scavenges through
the sarcophagi of my soul
ponders events
that have no grounding
in the land of mercy
whistles in wonderment
over scars
like ancient rocks
long since
left unturned.
And what were we to learn
from the exposure
the orgy
who gave you a key
to explore the forbidden
and who will
in the end
for this grave sin
stand
Accused?

Sanctum Sanctorum
Fireworks were spraying my way,
from Your eyes,
from Your mouth,
Your whole being
crashing against me.
Your black fire
upon my white fire
live fire
bursting through
the clouds of my soul,
a pillar of light
to dazzle
my bounty of colors.
From them shall I weave
with inspired skill
a curtain for the innermost
for the holy sanctuary
virginal closure
a hymnal broidery.

Primeval Bloods
Primeval bloods stampeding to you
my skin burgundies
surface tension
rising
challenging
the laws of physics.
In but a moment
the mysterious
-- the invisible membrane
will succumb
in our wine shall we drown
satiate the Land.
Ravens scream
who know not
the distinction
between
expiration of matter
and death.

Stolen Blessings
Tender Sun
peeks through the lattice
old, cracked
shutters
squeak
sweeten
their secrets
with ours.
Your quiet
virginal
flesh
sows in my depths
prayers and desires
blossoms towards me
with stolen blessings
scents of God's blessed
field.

Soon
Soon my child
we will tape the windows over again
stand in endless lines for
gas mask fittings
be sent home empty handed
told to come back
Soon
I will spend the nights awake
awaiting the siren
watch for clues
on foreign stations
Soon
we'll sit and pose for the camera
in our masks,
I will ask you to wear my rain slicker
you will pretend to not want to
but will
instead of going to school
you will come to work with me
Soon
we will be telling those jokes again
trying to diffuse the
anxiety permeating the
sealed room
like poison gas

Your Reflection in my Mirror
As toward a stranger I was destined to wed
Tentatively I approached --
Hope and trepidation.
I prayed that as in ancient legends
Perhaps we knew each other in a different life.
For long parted souls look not into the future,
But the past.
Our eyes met and immediately we knew
How could we forget!
Six hundred years ago we basked together
In the Spanish golden sun.
We sang the same romances, shared our wine.
In the splendor of Granada
How peacefully we sailed upon the dream
Of harmony and cultures shared,
Of human paradise.
Then the storm hit.
Stunned and confused we ran
And as we fled
Our hands tore apart
And torrential waves
Of people and events
Swept over us.
We lost one another
Five hundred years ago.
We took another step,
My feet still unsure,
The sands so soft and wet still
From the ebbing tide
How dare I look?
I could not know what's left to recognize
In the wreckage
And how to make the leap
Across half a millennium.
But even as our frames held on to solid ground
We could hear the flutter of our souls,
Never minding time or place
They embraced in a flight of fantasy.
Soaring high above the anger and the fears
And all the distances and walls
That five hundred years apart have built
We whirled by new landscapes
Of lives we might have lived,
People whom we might have been.
We wept by one another's sorrows
Gathered flowers in one another's childhood fields.
When it came time for me to go,
I discovered that you
Had polished my spirit into
A brilliant gem
And from each of its myriad facets
You shine
To the farthest reaches of my
Ancestral memory.
When it came time for me to go,
I did not know yet to thank you enough
For the many new lives,
All the joy and the pain
Your courageous voyage gave me
To hold me till we meet again.
Nineteen ninety-three
Five hundred and one years.
Where are you now?
What new stations did you cross
In your lonely pilgrimage?
And did you mend your heart
-- I recall the ripping sound, when it overfilled
Above the graveyard
Did it heal soft and large, with room enough for me
That I may always walk with you
(I could not hear your answer when I called).
Five hundred years and one, how is your strength
Do you walk always with your soul
And do you travel in your conscious hours or your sleep?
For stay, we know, our spirits will no more.
Five hundred and one years.
Do you still look for my reflection in your mirror?

The Violet that Never Was
Without warning, without twilight
the luminaries dimmed
in every sky
the color of the sunset
which sought to become violet
turned a mysterious gray.
We were walking among trees
thirsting for forests
stone walls
yearning for their rock
for their quarries.
the violet that never was
left in its wake a velvet train
which caressed us
in mercy
-- and humor
stirring the shudder
which would make us leave
our senses.
Hand not in hand
we sail through the darkness
like two astrologers
constellations
shower us with signs.
Easterly winds
from within
rend our heart
that we may pass through it
in parchment.

The Music of Parting
If you ever saw
a million wing-sealed Monarchs
on a tree in Monterey
you'd know the music of
parting
They seemed lifeless enough
ashen gray on winter bark
yet a certain yearning
rustled through them
like a breathing ancient harp
King Saul sought this
very sound when he called upon
the passion of David to
play before him and resurrect
his parting soul
But it was the wrong medium
and his already vampired hand
thrust the Royal Spear at the
prince of inspiration
If ever you saw
the silence of a spear
searching you
you'd know the music of
parting

Bertha's Return
What appeared to Bertha from the
window on the day she was dropped
was a school of parchments and
black scripture whirling
between her and the sun
and in their train of darkness
a pristine mariposa.
It was the day after the
Rejoicing in the Torah
she was contemplating the
cabanuelitos of her childhood
Which aspect of her past took the
people of San Elizario, Texas
to those quaint shelters in fields of harvest?
That day the horrors
past and future surged
ominous shadows wherever she turned
shearing and stitching her heart
patches of mute love
rends of final parting from
the hidden and the known
a lone white mariposa sailed into the
dusk of blazing parchments
when the blow came to her neck
or was it a cloud?
a shred of curtain she
was grasping for?
John knows...
When he returned to take her
ashes from the crematory
To drop her again, from the
cliff overlooking the river
the flutter of mysterious wings
was clearly heard
and a wind stirred up
from the valley
Bertha raised her ash-eyes
The skies opened and the
skeletal splendor of an emaciated
Divine appeared to her.
Galaxies of numbers were
emblazoned on His ulna
He was sinking from sphere to
empty sphere, His face turned back
making for his trembling bones
a garment of sack.

Bertha took air
into her powder-lungs
and floated up to Him
her coal-eyes weeping sap
She embraced His glowing frame
in her shawl-of-ash
saying, I am that I am then Your flesh
You rake me with iron
combs of sanctification and
inverted love-eternal
Immediately a canopy of
sultry shrouds draped the universe,
ancestral stakes pitched their bed
to the floor of eternity
and Bertha is wed.

Migration
The storks return to
circle over fertile
fields at the foothills
of Yerushalayim
We watch them move in
graceful disarray and
sway like mystics
in the marbled liquid sky
I pray for child, we
must go on, I say, so
many souls still
drift and pine
to be reborn in
flesh. Just one
for me or mine
I feel the rhythm
in my spine
remember Spain?
We saw storks
nest in broken
belfries inside
Avila. I think storks carry
exiled souls with them, from
there to here from
stone to pine
Here, de Leon in his
splendor, the hundred
hunted in the auto
of 1499
And still church bells dong
although so long
ago the shofar sounds
had died
dong! and the cries from
tortured ones by
rack, by wheel, by fire
a stork dips wings in
ashes, then spreads
them heaven-wide
she glides, comes
near and rests
before our dazzled eyes
silently we ask for
memories of lives
expired
glad that we understand,
the bird unburdens them
and flies

Chant
Ancient melodies and hymns
Weep through us like blood
Rivulets to rivers
Then the flood.
Sail on your uncharted voyage
Brave the dark and secret worlds
Reach into your ancient caverns
For voices from a time untold.
Hear the trumpets announcing the auto-da-fe
The blood-curdling chorus of tortured cries.
Behold your previous incarnation
Martyred in flames
-- You did not die.
Kol Nidrei
Chant it through your tears.
When will the others recognize
That God has brought you here?

7 Adar
The Master of the Universe
Will gather you unto His heart
Will find a cure
For all the scars
On your mangled soul
Remove them
With flint
Like foreskin
Uncover every wound and sore
Dress them with His poultice.
The Master of the Universe
Will weave for you
A basket of rush
A cradle of reeds
Line it
With feather clouds
He will float you
Upon the stream
Of illumination
Goldfish and Leviathan
To play with.
The Master of all babes
Will caress your soul
With lovingkindness
Will suckle you with honey
From the cleft in His rock
He will set you asail
On the Sea of Splendor
-- Infinite radiance
Neath the mounts of Ophir
Where light blinds not
Nor shadow dwells.

Release
And deep within you
Something flutters,
Trembles.
Far in those depths
Where organs bear
Neither name
Nor form,
Where darkness too
Bears no shade.
Something dull
Twitches, invokes
Mourns.
And you know not
What inside the
Pupils of your soul
Is extinguished
--What is kindled
And you know not
What inside your womb is born
And what effaced
Your throat constricts.
Everything existent in you
Is funneled into
That point of flutter
--The mysterious magnet
Your flesh convulses:
Inversed unto itself
Your flesh is sucked
Into the tunnel
--Flows unto its dust
Now your soul breaks
--Trough the mirror lining
Blends into the many
Reflections of your past.
Your soul is transplanted
Into a galaxy
Of twinkling buds
To bloom in the valley
Of the Undying.

When Spirits
The loneliness of knowing when you're leaving
But not when you return
Or how,
Or if
And who you will become
And what new regions I will be exploring
In your absence,
Only in your absence
Whether I will know the road back to your arms.
Speaking the "hi sweetheart" language,
Hours everyday
Charge it to the calling card
Never overtax the heart
Airport pickup
Clockwork timing
Who is it that you have in mind
When you say that you still love me
And do you feel contaminated
Does it give you motion sickness
To profane by touching bodies
When the spirits are apart?

All your Gales Silently
Your hands --angel's wings
Flutter
Crush, heal
Explore, feel
Cleave
With all my might
To your trunk
That you not
Leave me
Here
Your mouth
Burning coals
Whisper smoke
through the
passages of my soul
Smolder
Upon my lips
Brand your seal
In me
Your eyes emeralds from
the forests of Eden
no
Sunsparkled sapphires
no
Primeval abyss
Milk and honey upon
The eye of your storm
Eye far seeing
Eye withholding
Mysteries
All your gales
Silently
You pass over me
All your tides
Silent you surge in me
Silent
You ebb.