elliot richman

A Passover Carol


After the children find the afikomen
and I've had more than my allotted
share of wine, I sneak out of the seder
just as when I was a kid,
this time walking toward a barn
instead of the corner of a street
of brick row homes. My uncle Eddie,
Aunt Sophie, Uncle Dave, Aunt May,
all dead, killed in Time's gas chamber.
So's cousin Kranie, who changed her name
to Kay before she was raped and murdered--
by blacks, not Cossacks. The rest of the family
scattered, the typical end of the century
Diaspora--St. Paul, Miami, Vancouver,
Washington, Philadelphia, and me
in Vermont, walking toward a barn
alone a well-worn snow path,
leaving a table of strangers, invited by my lover,
the only gentile, to eat matzah and drink wine,
celebrating the escape from Egypt,
not Sobibor, a Ph.D. from Dartmouth
who raises goats, a blues musician in dredlocks,
whose spiritual path led him to a swami
in New Jersey, some divorced females into
crysals and channeling, a vegan witch
from Woodstock believing
a "past life experience"
placed her in Ravensbruck,
another, an M.A. in art from Yale,
offering to concoct an astrological chart
for me, a Scorpio, I believe, everyone at least
two decades younger than I, all celebrating,
with fine Merlot from France
rather than Manishewitz from California,
our deliverance from bondage,
every one of us obviously alive,
all the cattle cars destroyed by allied bombers
as they carried troops to Berlin
	not Jews to Birkenau.
Before I reach the barn, I light a cigarette,
looking about like a prisoner in a camp
for the kapo with the club,
so used to being on guard
for the "Cigarette Nazis,"
as Seinfeld might call them.
The coast is clear.  I inhale deeply,
smelling the barn and the horses
under a full moon on Thunder Ridge
in the shadow of the snow upon
Mt. Abraham, near a 19th century
barn with a colt and a stolid work
horse like out of a Budweiser ad.
I could be in Poland or Belorussia
a hundred years ago, in this darkness,
in the smell of horses and snow.
Not wanting to smoke in the barn
I sit on a pile of wood,
and Mala Zimetbaum joins me,
she and her Polish lover, Edek Galinksi,
the most famous escapees from Birkenau,
Edekk disguising himself as a Nazi officer,
immaculate as Mary's conception,
Mala his prisoner, a red X painted
on the back of a baggy uniform,
the yellow star in front,
underneath, a gay fraulein frock,
the two of them marching under
	those words of iron:
	ARBEIT MACH FREI
able to "organize" the necessary disguises
since Mala was a Lauferin, a runner,
translator; Edek, an "old number,"
a survivor from the first batch to the KZ,
both privileged prisoners, "prominents,"
risking everything in the camp resistance;
Mala, what Anne Frank might have become 
had she lived another 8 years, instead
of shitting her rectum out in Belsen,
Edek more Aryan looking than Heydrich,
both caught and executed after a couple
	months of freedom.
I've read enough I.B. Singer and Rudolf Hoss,
the first Kommandant of Auschwitz,
to know that anything is possible,
so I merely consider Zimetbaum a Jewish
ghost from Pesah past, wearing a faded
Haftling uniform, the sleeves rolled up,
the number on her left arm --
19,880 -- the color of the moon.
I offer her a Virginia Slim,
procured from a witch.
Even as a ghost, Mala checks
to see if the coast is clear,
then inhales deeply.
I am madly in love with her.
"How's Edek?" is all I can say.
"It's not what you think," she answers
in perfect British English,
though born in Belgium,
snow falling
through the vapor
of her breath.
"Well, we survived," I say, making
	small talk.
"I guess that's something," she answers.
Then Mala shows me her wrists,
the slash marks still open wounds
where she severed her veins,
the razor blade hidden in her hair,
flinging her blood into the Kommandant's
	midwestern-like face,
the gallows behind her,
the assembled Women's Camp in front,
motionless in ranks of five,
Mala, spinning her arms,
a windmill of blood,
nothing but a blue
bruise for a face,
beseeching the prisoners
through broken teeth
never to forget
what happened here.
"Gendenk! Remember!"
she screams in Yiddish.
"Pamietaj!  Remember!"
	in Polish,
	in Polish,
"Erinnert euch!  Erinnert dich!"
	Remember!  Remember!
	in Deutsch,
before the SS beat
her senseless, then cart
her into a crematorium
to be burned alilve,
while Edek, his perfect
Aryan face a shambles
of bruises and blood,
dangles from a scaffold
on the men's side.
Arms upraised on Thunder Ridge
in the shadow of the snow upon
Mt. Abraham on a Passover evening
in Vermont, my love's blood commences
to spurt as it did in that incandescent
Polish dawn, freckling the Kommandant's face,
while a girl in the third rank, her uniform
a shredded evening gown,
a sartorial Nazi joke,
the sexy neckline, revealing
a breastless breast,
hides her eyes
with faces-stained fingers
and keens the first syllables
of the Kaddish as Mala's blood,
now inundates this valley,
her body a dam bursting.
A lousy swimmer, I tread water,
barely able to stay afloat,
the horses from the barn
swimming alongside me,
their heads arched like
the bows on Viking ships.
But this Red Sea doesn't part,
it simply rises into the darkness
snow flurries melting
	like falling stars
into Mala's still warn blood,
while I dream of dancing
the hora at my Bar Mitzvah,
me with that large pompadour
fragrant of green grease,
instead of naked scalp,
the girl in the evening gown
squeezing my left hand,
Mala clutching my right,
the other six million guests
hand in hand, rejoicing.




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