Gabriel Page 6

  And believed in meeting the world

  With equanimity

  But the poor bastard changed his mind

  When Death swaddled up

  His two-and-a-half-year-old daughter

  I love him for calling on griefs

  And laments from every quarter

  O tears of Heraclitus O dirges of Simonides

  To help him mourn the child

  Whom Oblivion obliterated

  With such uncanny force

  We learned in school that funeral elegies

  Laments and threnodies

  Were reserved for big public occasions

  And so the classical poets sang

  Of heroes who fell valiantly in battle

  Military leaders and philosopher-kings

  But Kochanowski could not bear

  To see his daughter’s flowered dress

  Her smooth ribbons her gold-clasped belt

  And so he called on Urszula

  To come back and haunt him again

  As a shadow a dream or a ghost

  Wisdom for me was castles in the air

  I’m hurled like all the others

  From the topmost stair

  Yamanoue worried that his son’s soul

  Would not know the right road

  To take in the underworld

  And so he offered to pay the fee

  Of the courier from the realms below

  To carry Furuhi on his back

  A father broods that his son

  Is wandering on the wrong road

  Lost in the otherworld without a coat

  I beseech you with offerings

  Be true and lead him

  On the straight road to heaven

  Izumi could not understand

  How her daughter could be cremated

  And then vanish into the empty sky

  When even the snow

  The fragile white snow

  Falls downward into this world

  During the memorial service

  She was distressed by the temple bell

  That kept ringing and ringing

  Listen to the resonance

  Listen to the sound of longing

  The sound of loss

  Why did he have to keep striking

  That holy bell for Naishi

  Each strike was a blow

  The grieving poets are distracted

  By so many thoughts

  The wrong road the falling snow the bell

  I wonder if the Pearl poet

  Was grieving for his lost daughter

  Or mourning on commission

  For someone else’s gem

  Whom he turned into a dream vision

  Of spotless radiance

  I understand the trope the fantasy

  Of the erstwhile father the jeweler

  Who is so caught

  In the chill grip of grief

  Over his poor imprisoned pearl

  That he falls asleep at her grave

  And discovers his precious

  As a grown woman

  Glittering on the other side

  I’m a little rocky on the theology

  But I like the idea that a pearl

  Is also a two-year-old child

  Who is also a royal young woman

  Who is also the immortal soul

  Who is also the heavenly city

  Love could still hurt him

  When he awoke in a green garden

  Where she lay buried

  I wish I could believe in the otherworld

  I wish I could believe in a place

  Of reunions outside of memory

  The Pearl poet was baffled

  By what he saw in a mound of earth

  In the darkened dungeon of sorrow

  I do not understand how she could write

  Anything but elegies for the stillborn

  And God-struck

  Margaretha Susanna von Kuntsch

  Lost eight sons and five daughters

  I do not understand how she could stand

  Anything Christian or otherwise

  Desperation spoke to me in her voice

  And I carried around her poem

  Occasioned by the Death of My Fifth Born

  Little Son the Little Chrysander or CK

  On the 22nd of November 1686

  Where she compares herself

  To the warrior-king Agamemnon

  Since all her hopes and joys

  Had burned in the tomb

  With her ninth child

  Sacrificed to the knife of death

  Who will give me the courage

  Who will sharpen my crafty pen

  When my blood is stirred

  To try to describe my feelings in words

  I who am merely a woman

  My senses falter

  My hand trembles

  The pen refuses my service

  The page is shaking

  And cannot bear the words of grief

  Let my silent suffering

  Bear witness to my desolation

  And then all at once

  He was sitting across from us

  In a booth by the window

  In a crowded restaurant

  On Route 9 I think

  Maybe on Seventy-seventh and Broadway

  It was natural to see him

  Staring at the menu

  And figuring out what to order

  Oblivious to the jukebox

  And the din around us

  His native habitat

  Excitement overwhelmed me

  And I stared at him so intensely

  I almost lit up his face

  Don’t spook him Laurie said

  He doesn’t know

  What’s going to happen

  We knew we had seen it all

  But he was careless

  And didn’t understand

  You’re my only son

  I ventured but I couldn’t tell

  If he heard me over the music

  It was so familiar to see him

  Sitting across from me again

  In the early morning light

  It was as simple as daylight

  Dawning between us

  I could still speak to him

  Grief broke down in phrases

  And extrapolated lines

  From me without myself

  Tear-stained pillow of stone

  I felt I was lying

  Beside him in the coffin

  Wormy mother

  Who takes us into the ground

  With her whenever and wherever

  She wants the grass glistens

  And grows over us in the heat

  Of late summer in the country

  It was hard to breathe

  When dust choked the treetops

  And clotted the roots

  Stay calm the light wind blows

  Through the branches at night

  Peer up at the moon

  Not knowing who I am

  I was lying beside him

  In the coffin I still couldn’t breathe

  And so I woke up in the shadow

  Of morning black light

  And put on my mourning clothes

  His mother also slipped into black

  Treachery of the parents

  Who outlive their son

  It was too late to warn him

  What had already happened

  He was going ahead alone

  I did not know the work of mourning

  Is like carrying a bag of cement

  Up a mountain at night

  The mountaintop is not in sight

  Because there is no mountaintop

  Poor Sisyphus grief

  I did not know I would struggle

  Through a ragged underbrush

  Without an upward path

  Because there is no path

  There is only a blunt rock

  With a river to fall into
<
br />   And Time with its medieval chambers

  Time with its jagged edges

  And blunt instruments

  I did not know the work of mourning

  Is a labor in the dark

  We carry inside ourselves

  Though sometimes when I sleep

  I am with him again

  And then I wake

  Poor Sisyphus grief

  I am not ready for your heaviness

  Cemented to my body

  Look closely and you will see

  Almost everyone carrying bags

  Of cement on their shoulders

  That’s why it takes courage

  To get out of bed in the morning

  And climb into the day

  Arriving for the funeral

  Disoriented hysterical

  It was too much to go through

  My mother Gabriel’s biggest advocate

  Argued that he was a born

  Salesman and consumer like her

  He had a bit of the con

  So what that’s necessary in business

  She thought I should stake him to a company

  You’re too tough on him she said

  Until she was around him for a few days

  And then she thought I wasn’t tough enough

  I discovered the secret of the bond

  Between grandmother and grandson

  A common enemy

  My sister Nancy and her partner Chelo

  His cousin David followed him around

  They found him a sweet soul

  My sister Lenie too a therapist

  He liked to tease her about psychotherapy

  Which was way overrated

  Janet’s relatives my cousins and friends

  My family wanted to bury him in Chicago

  Where he could be near my dad

  He wouldn’t be so lonesome

  Because everyone treks out to visit

  On Father’s Day and other holidays

  But he was a true New Yorker

  The city he loved and so we purchased

  A plot in Mount Eden Cemetery

  Who had always clanged

  Like a bell in the darkness

  Was now silenced

  And I stood in the funeral home

  Mute and disbelieving

  To bury my son

  With the other ritual mourners

  My mother my ex-wife my two sisters

  My lover in stunned grief

  I climbed up a stepladder

  To gaze down into his face

  Which I touched with my hand

  I leaned over and kissed him

  On the forehead

  It was chilly and hard

  I kissed him on the lips

  They were stone cold

  It was like kissing a corpse

  I started keening and wailing

  A sob came out of my body

  A sound I had never heard before

  It was animalistic primal

  The wailing the terrible keen

  Kept bursting out of me

  I wandered off to the side

  My relatives cried back and forth

  Between the coffin and the pew

  Low muffled shrieks and sobs

  All the women ringing

  Beside themselves

  I hope there is a God

  Shahid said after his mother died

  He owes me an apology

  Melville does believe in God

  Lawrence Thompson told his class

  He thinks He’s a real son of a bitch

  I solemnly swear before God

  That a real Son of a Bitch

  Who does not exist

  Owes me an apology

  Which I will not accept

  Anyway I thought the Lord

  Cannot help me now or ever

  It’s a ceremony to say goodbye

  The rabbi explained

  I do not believe I think

  I understand why the old Jews

  Tear their clothes and cover the mirrors

  Maybe it’s not the best time

  To think about God’s absence

  The insensibility of nature

  Prayers can help you

  Prayers cannot help you

  Excessive mourning is forbidden

  What else are there but rituals

  To cover up the emptiness

  O Disbelief

  Lord Nothingness

  When my son’s suffering ended

  My own began

  Why did the sun rise this morning

  It’s not natural

  I don’t want to see the light

  It’s not time to close the casket

  Or say Kaddish for my son

  I’ve already buried two fathers

  With a mother to come

  Isn’t that enough Lord who wants us

  To exalt and sanctify Him

  I don’t want to wear the mourner’s ribbon

  Or wake up crying every morning

  For God knows how long

  I don’t want to tuck my son into the ground

  As if we were putting him to bed

  For the last time

  Close the prayer book I will not pretend

  That God brings peace upon us

  And upon all Israel

  I don’t want to hear anyone

  Scolding me from her wheelchair

  Because I’m crying too hard

  I’m not worried about a heart attack

  Nothingness

  You’ve already broken my heart

  I will not forgive you

  Sun of emptiness

  Sky of blank clouds

  I will not forgive you

  Indifferent God

  Until you give me back my son

  I was shaking but I was also looking down

  At myself from a great distance

  Poor grief-stricken father

  I pity you I thought

  Your heart is lying there

  Stretched out in a box

  In a Jewish funeral home

  And now you must say goodbye

  Lamentations forever bereft

  The limousines were already lined up

  On West End Avenue

  For the procession to the cemetery

  He would have liked the black sedans

  The friends and relatives gathering

  Outside the parlor for the funeral

  It was time to close the casket

  The funeral director said cautiously

  There was no more time blanked out

  I had to stand on a stepladder

  To reach him I couldn’t tear myself away

  From leaning down and kissing him

  On the eyes the forehead the cheeks

  The lips colder than ice

  The wretched sound

  Started coming out of me again

  He was there in the coffin

  He was not there in the coffin

  It was Gabriel it was not Gabriel

  Wild spirit beloved son

  Where have you fled

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My gratitude to Janet Landay, who lived with me through so much of what is recounted here, and has her own story to tell as Gabriel’s mother. We have different perspectives, as all parents do, but also a shared history, a united grief.

  Thanks to Charles Baxter, Michael Collier, and Garrett Hongo, who have been such rock-solid friends in literature and life. I have great trust in my friend and editor, Deborah Garrison. And I am lucky in my two supportive sisters, Arlene and Nancy Hirsch.

  Special thanks to Joseph Straw, whose adventures with Gabriel lift the spirit of this book. Two of the sections adapt his eloquent off-the-cuff eulogy.

  Laurie Watel held me up when I needed it most, and inspired me back to life.

  This is a father’s book, but it belongs to my son Gabriel, who animates it. Some debts are too deep for words.


  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Edward Hirsch has published eight books of poetry and five books of prose. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.