Riffing with My Daughters after the\u00a0<\/strong>Sharansky-Douglas Show<\/strong><\/p>\n This poem came about after hearing Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident who spent nine years in jail, and Michael Douglas, the American movie star, speak recently about their Jewish pasts. Anti-Israel students were shouting outside the hall at Brown … Continue reading One evening after seeing Natan Sharansky,
\nI was telling my girls who he was when he was
\nfamous, brilliant, mythic, admired.
\nWe were drinking tea, it was late.<\/h4>\nBut the excitement of the day – rushing
\ntowards an illegal spot, jostling the crowd,
\nseeing Michael Douglas – a thrill even if it
\nwas a bit of a horse and pony show –<\/h4>\nmust have made me ditzy. Not to mention
\nthe absurdity of protests– a couple of old
\nJews sitting around kibitzing?
\nPolice with guns had been called in.<\/h4>\nSo I told them, When Natan was finally released
\n<\/em>from prison, about to board a plane,
\n<\/em>he sat down, refusing to move.
\n<\/em>The Soviets wouldn’t give him back his book of palms.<\/em><\/h4>\nPalms?<\/em> I’d been mixing up words a lot.
\nWe howled. I’d meant psalms,<\/em> ones that he’d
\nread over and over during those nine dark
\nyears of being a refusnik.<\/h4>\nWe laughed harder about my
\nmistake, knowing that the book he’d held in his hands
\nhad become part of his body, the front and back
\ncovers like left and right hand.<\/h4>\nOr the reverse: his thin body had become part
\nof the book. Open-hearted, open-palmed like an
\neternal harp song.\u00a0\u00a0 He’d become free;
\nprison was merely an encumbrance.<\/h4>\nMandelshtam wrote, You left me my lips,
\nand they shape words, even in silence.<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"