Trafika Europe 12 - French Bon-Bons

APERTURE (ten poems) By Jacek Dehnel Translated from Polish by Karen Kovacik

MATZEVOT

Jewish Cemetery, Kraków

Here letter and stone find fulfillment: a snail inlays ornamental tracing with silver thread. And the apple tree’s soft shadow falls over shattered slabs.

Here grass and epoch find fulfillment. The hands of a rabbi. A deer. Menorah. scroll and lion of Judah, and sails of a ship. Beneath the sod the tsaddik’s pupils sit, reading delicate letters of gravel and pebble from the eternal book of the earth. Names of bygone people, prior days and things echo softly in their arid skulls. Later the whispers of those reading will go silent, and in that moment the voice of a trumpet, forged from a cloud, will resound over the plain. The lion topples the lit candelabra, and fire touches the smooth grain of the Torah.

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