Composition with Goat
Red
The Butcher
Children in Trees
The Dvina River
In the Night
Passion
The Rooster
The little Jewish
boy
is sent running
by the imagined knock at the door
of a cossack
he buries himself
beneath the skirted
bed of his mother
finds the stale-sweet smell
of old shoes
he would stay put
were it not for dinner.
The old Jewish man
is wrapped in his broad tallis
bound in his tight tfillin
at dusk he runs
half-naked through the street
climbs a rooftop
and there plays like a shoemaker
a fiddle
or eats a raw carrot
he might never come down.
(Meanwhile father
who smells of herring
lugs barrels on his back
falls asleep at his supper.
and mother gives birth
to children she wipes clean
their bodies
and keeps food on their table.
as the little one from his window gazes
and daily the Dvina River
dumps its dark water
into the sea. )