(with thanks to Madeleine L’Engle)

A tesseract, you may recall, acts like a wrinkle in time
Cinching together now and long ago or
Right this minute and decades hence
Like a pleat, a hem
Or a cloth swept from the table
All whorls and fluting, rapidly compressed. 

It’s what they nowadays would call a wormhole
And say you need a warp drive to approach.
But parents generate them just by being:
Seed them with our breath
Spark them with our glance
Roil spacetime’s fabric with our every step. 

You know it from yourself:

How the smell of chlorine can transport you
To those mornings with your mother at the pool
Her laughter at the cold and splash and rush of it
Your buoyancy, and hers 

How maraschino cherries take you back
To the diner where your father met his pals
His smoky smell, the crinkles round his eyes
And how you craved their light. 

So we outlive ourselves
Our images self-assembling
In a son or daughter’s view
Bright holograms that hearten, soothe, or sear. 

It’s something, you might say, to bear in mind:

That this little girl
Who takes forever to put her shoes on
Who will never, ever, go to sleep
Will one day be waiting at a stoplight
Or pause while paying a bill
And zoom back along the timeline to today.
When you look at her, see that woman
A little tired, maybe tense
With the lines of age just starting near her mouth
Watch her face change as she’s struck
By a sudden memory of you
Exactly as you are right here and now
Meet her gaze
And make her smile at the thought.

Hamburg wraps itself around two lakes
Formed by the river Alster.
Once in a very rare winter they freeze solid
Conjuring new space in the center of town.
A sudden shortcut in the sunshine
A huge white loop to skate or ski
A nighttime fairground where you go to drink hot gluehwein
Bought from lantern-lit booths suspended over water.
To eat sweet powdered pastries and hear accordions play
To watch the crowds of people laughing
On a street that’s made of waves.

It’s something to see but I never saw it
Twenty years ago, at twenty-three.
My bus stopped right around the corner at the Rathaus
Every day I wanted to go look
But grief had cut the circuit
Connecting wish to act
Had shrunken movement to a shuttling
On a single tunneled track.
I knew it lay just out of sight, beyond the building’s edge
Where brindled stones, tight-mortared, mounted to the sky.
A viscid nausea coiled around my ribs
Want but can’t want but can’t want but can’t
Until there was no longer any choice.

You could say it’s the reason
I saw Christo wrap the Park
Why I walked the Golden Gate despite the wind
And I greet the ocean every summer day I can.
But it’s also why I dream sometimes
Of winter dryads locked in leafless wood
Their heartglow ebbing almost to the root
Arm-branches outstretched, black and stiff with ice.

Hail Mary
Full of grace
Blessed are you among women
And blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus 

The baby had colic and money was tight
She was not always patient.
Sometimes at night she wept
Watching his finally-sleeping face
Stroking the tiny foot that would one day be a man’s
Fearing what hurt she’d done him in her pain 

Holy Mary
Mother of God
Pray for us sinners
Now and at the hour of our death 

You get the child you get, not the one you’re ready for
When his passion overwhelms him
She tries to keep him safe
But she can’t understand the things he sees
Sometimes she feels so tired, wants an ordinary boy
But she leads him home and listens to his tales 

Hail Mary
Full of grief
Blessed are you among women
And blessed is the fruit of your womb 

She saw her child murdered
Held his broken body in her arms.
They make her look young in those pictures
But she was fifty then
And aged at least a decade overnight.
And she did not feel forgiving. 

Holy Mary
Mother of God
Pray for us sinners
Now and at the hour of our death. 

All the rest came later, after she herself had died
Rock and tomb, signs and tongues, all were comforts that she had to live without.
Her days broke into moments, always now and now and now:
Give that bread, hold that hand, wipe that brow
Though you don’t know if it matters or makes any sense at all
Do this, he said, do this in memory of me 

Holy Mary
Blessed are you
Pray for us 

For this is all we have
A touch, a kiss, a word
To fill this fleeting interval of light.

Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba

I am Rivka, a convert, bat Avraham ve Sarah
also daughter of Heidi, whose first memories are of craters made by English bombs in Hamburg streets
granddaughter of Lotte, who died in Marburg the day the Wall came down
adopted niece of Hilde, Lotte’s childhood friend who decades later became my own. 

b’alma di v’ra khir’utei, v’yamlikh malkhutei

Lotte, my Oma, came to New York every summer
Bringing strange toothpaste and lotion and chocolates I loved
Speaking to my mother a language I didn’t understand
And telling me stories, always the same ones, of her husband, her children, and Mr. Rosenbaum. 

b’hayeikhon u-v’yomeikhon u-v’hayei dkhol beit yisrael,

“He was our teacher in the high school, and all the girls loved him, he was so kind
He took us on class trips, and we would sing:  he had a beautiful voice.
He would lead us through the fields, singing.
All of us loved Mr. Rosenbaum.” 

ba’agala u-viz-man kariv
v’imru amen. 

Always, over and over the same,
The schoolgirl’s affection still shining from her at fifty-five, sixty and seventy-one
So that I came, with teenage wisdom, to say yes, Oma, we know
We know all about Mr. Rosenbaum 

Y’hei sh’mei raba m’varakh l’alam  u’l’almei ‘almaya.

She never talked about the war.
Except to say terrible, terrible I pray never again 

Yitbarakh v’yishtabah v’yitpa’ar

Years later I ask Hilde, I want to know
She says terrible, terrible, but we didn’t know any Jews
v’yitromam v’yitnasei
How could we know?
V’yit-hadar
It happened early in the mornings
v’yit’ aleh v’yit-halal
We didn’t know any Jews
sh’mei d’kudsha
We didn’t know, I didn’t know
b’rikh hu 

Last year my mother told me.
“They knew people who were killed, of course they did.
Tante Paula, your great-grandmother’s cousin: she married a Jew.
One night they both disappeared.  She came back alone, later, and they’d ransacked her apartment—
There was nothing but trash in empty rooms.
Kaftanski was his name.” 

l’ela min kol birkhata v’shirata, tushb’hata

And you know, the teacher, Mr. Rosenbaum.
He was a Jew.  One day they went to school and all the Jewish teachers were gone.” 

v’nehemata da-amiran b’alma
v’imru amen. 

She never told the end of the story.
She only spoke of songs and fields. 

Y’hei sh’lama raba min sh’maya

I don’t know his Yahrzeit.
I don’t know his place of death.
I don’t know his first name. 

v’hayim aleinu v’al kol yisrael

I know all the girls loved him
I know he was kind
I know he used to sing
He had a beautiful voice 

v’imru amen.

This is not a poem
It is not a “poem after”
It is Kaddish
Only Kaddish 

Oseh shalom bi-m’romav, hu ya-aseh shalom

I will not forget
I will not forget 

aleinu v’al kol yisrael
v’imru amein.