The haiku form, whose virtues begin with enforced concision, can function well as a stanza in a poem that tells a story or makes an argument, or so I found in 2007 when, for a month and a half in the early Autumn, David Shapiro and I corresponded daily by haiku. Here is my "Days of Penitence and Awe."
In temple I prayed
and chanted Holy! Holy!
Holy! And was scared.
Father forgive me.
For what? For things done, not done.
The time I wasted.
For “scared,” read “sacred,”
its anagram. I am, said
the Lord. The terror!
The terror! Isaac
knew it. But do we? Faithless
friends exit the scene
after wasting years
playing Falstaff drinking and
praising his own past.
He believed in what?
In Prince Hal, who loved him but
had to reject him.
What do we believe?
Money money money said
Roethke and Lawrence.
We believe that life in
an office is hard work and
a cocktail at five.
We believe in pills.
Chemistry and medicine
can make us young. Vanity
fair as life is not.
We believe there are two outs,
bottom of the ninth.
Bottom of the night.
Vulgarity supreme, a
loud new century
of madmen in robes.
People have asked me what is
my favorite word.
I say “you.” Sometimes
I think the most potent word
in English is Jew.
O could I absent
myself from my daily rounds!
I would return as
the count of Monte
Cristo or Joseph revealed.
So I fondly dream.
Just so my mind roams
while the rest of me sits here
in temple and prays.
from Yeshiva Boys by David Lehman (Scribner, 2009).
-- DL
These are delicious, David. I love the liturgical echo in "For things done, not done. / The time I wasted." And that "sacred" is an anagram for "scared" -- wouldn't Freud have a field day with that? The hint of "The horror! The horror!"
And oh, "We believe that there are two outs, / bottom of the ninth." That's the epitome of the Ne'ilah service, at the end of Yom Kippur, right there. Of course it's existential.
Really, marvelous stuff. Shanah tovah!
Posted by: Rachel Barenblat | September 25, 2008 at 07:31 AM
A wonderful collab. Wise and funny all at once.
Posted by: Terence Winch | September 06, 2021 at 09:45 AM