By Yaffa Yonah

By Mosheh Vineberg
The Rabbi’s beard

like bleached steel wool,

hides lips that tremble,

a tongue that dances

reading

drops

of

black ink on white parchment;

mystic fire and ecstasy.

Appearances deceive: he is no disheveled

homeless beggar,

there is beauty

buried beneath that worn velvet kippah,

wrinkled finger tips

that have caressed teffillin straps

smoothed over years,

and eyes pressed shut

in timeless meditation,

a worn bench and shtender

await his fragile bony frame.

An 8 day old boy is brought

to his lap,

his eyes swollen with tears,

a great grandson wails!

Translated from the Hebrew
1

The summer will come exposing the flesh

conserving water, conserving men

some thing in the skin will turn common

unsparing

there will be no one to listen to stories

and on the shores each will his brother

breathe

we will slither away from them upon our

belly.

10

I need skin now smooth

and snug on bone

not on sinew not in flesh

stiff on bone

taut skin hides no thought

By Sara Meirowitz
“For poetry makes nothing happen; it survives/In the valley of its making”—W. H. Auden, “In Memory of W. B. Yeats.”