The Best American Poetry

Violoncello [Dovid Hofshteyn - Trans. by Lera Auerbach]

Dovid Hofshteyn (1889-1952) left Russia during the years of war and revolution and was a pioneer of modernist literature in Yiddish after the First World War. He returned to the USSR in the mid-1920s and became involved in Soviet cultural activities in Yiddish. Like other Yiddish writers, Hofshteyn participated in the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. In 1948, as part of the process of eliminating Yiddish culture in the USSR, he was arrested and tried alongside other Jewish authors. On August 12, 1952, he was executed by the Soviet government in what has come to be known as the Night of the Murdered Poets.

 

Violoncello

 

Vos boygstu zikh, mayn zel?
Vos brumstu brustik tif?
Un s’tsitern di vent,
di zayln fun mayn zayn,
un hekher, hekher shtaygt 
di shtil fun ere dayner,
un nider vert bagrobt
mit shtoyb fun dayne fis.

 

Vos boygstu zikh, mayn zel?
Vos brumstu brustik tif?
Vos bodstu zikh in shtoyb,
vos vashstu zikh in ash,
vi foyglen in a hits,
vos hobm furkht far vaser 
un kiln zikh mit erd un frishn zikh in mist?..

 

Vos boygstu zikh, mayn zel?
Vos brumstu brustik tif,
vi zod fun frishn blut
af shtumen roytn shteyn,
vi zod, vos vert nit shtil
fun umshuld zoyber-reynem,
biz gloybik heyses blut
mit tsiter im bagist.

 

Nu, boyg zhe zikh, mayn zel,
nu, brum zhe brustik tif,
un ver fun ashn klor,
fun blutn ver shoyn reyn,
un ver fun tsiter mild,
ver loyter shoyn fun veynen,
un zol tsu likht dir zayn
dayn groyser brokh, dayn ris!

 

 

Violoncello

Why do you vibrate, my soul,
rumbling deeply in my chest?
The walls of my core are trembling.
Higher, still higher, soars
your quiet honour.
Then, falling, it buries itself
under the dust of your feet.

 

Why do you vibrate, my soul,
rumbling deeply in my chest?
Why do you bathe in the dust,
and wash yourself in the ashes?
So are birds in the smouldering heat,
thirsty for water – can cool
themselves in the earth,
and get refreshed in the sand.

Why do you vibrate, my soul,
from the depth of my chest,
boiling like fresh blood
spilt on the mute stones?
The boiling will not subside
from its pure innocence,
nor from its hot devotion –
it is trembling, spilling over.

Oh, bend to me, my soul,
sing heartfully within my depth,
cleansed by ashes
purified by blood,
your strings tremble gentler,
enlightened by the sobbing …
Let the grief and sorrow
illuminate the way!

 

— “Violoncello” by Dovid Hofshteyn (Translation by Lera Auerbach)

Lullaby [Itzik Manger - Trans. by Lera Auerbach]

Itzik Manger (1901-1969) was widely considered as a poet with a unique style among his peers. In the 1930s, he moved to Warsaw and later to Paris, escaping Nazi persecution. After the war, he continued to reflect on the destruction of European Jewry during the Holocaust. In his final years, he lived in Israel.

“LULLABY”

Ikh vel dikh nisht ufvekn,
saydn a foygl,
vos veyst, du host goldene oygn.
Er vet zikh shteln af dayn bet:
er hot zikh mit a yuni-nakht farvet
(zi iz sheyn un gayvedik on a shir),
az du bist toyznt mol shener fun ir.

Ikh vel dikh nisht ufvekn,
saydn a vint,
vos vet arayn durkh а shpare geshvind.
Тu epes a vint,
vos vil visn, tsi s’iz shener faran 
fun volkns, shtern un hint.

Ikh vel dikh nisht ufvekn,
saydn a boym,
vos vet royshn tsu shtark in dayn troym.
Der boym iz der eltster boym in vald,
a kayme-lon fun toyznt yor alt.
Tu epes a boym,
vos vil visn, tsi s’iz sheners faran
fun zayn roysh, fun zayn bli, fun zayn troym.

Ikh vel dikh nisht ufvekn,
saydn a regn,
vos vet kumen a groyer fun vegn un shtegn
un klapm in shtub mit di finger.
Der regn is nokh a yunger.
Ersht nekhtn iz er a prints geven,
haynt iz er farkisheft: eyn shmeykhl fun dir — 
un er vert tsurik vos geven.

Ikh vel dikh nisht ufvekn,
saydn a malekh,
vos vet kumen tsu flien fun a mehalekh 
af a vaysn levone-shtral 
un knien ba dayn geleger 
un zingen: “Shvester, shvesterl mayn!
Vos ken nokh shener un shener zayn 
fun dir un fun mir”.

. . . . . .

Sha, ikh vel mit a goldenem rigl 
farriglen di tir.

— “Lullaby” by Itzik Manger

 

“LULLABY”

I will not wake you up.
Perhaps, only a bird,
who knows your golden eyes,
will stand on your bed-post.
The bird had made a bet with June’s Night
(which is beautiful and maddeningly arrogant)
that you are still a thousand times more beautiful.

I will not wake you up.
Perhaps, only the wind
may quickly penetrate the cracks.
What will you do with the wind –
it wants to know if there is anything more beautiful
than clouds, stars, and dogs.

I will not wake you up.
Perhaps, only a tree
will rustle noisily in your dreams.
The tree – most ancient in the forest –
may be a thousand years old.
What will you do with the tree –
it wants to know if there is anything more beautiful
than its noises, its blossoms, its dreams.

I will not wake you up.
Perhaps only the rain,
will come, all gray from its travels.
It will tap on the house with its fingers.
The rain is still young.
Only yesterday it was a prince,
today it is enchanted. Just one of your smiles —
and it will become himself again.

I will not wake you up,
Perhaps only an angel
flying from far away
on a white moonbeam
will kneel at your bedside
and sing: “Sister, my little sister,
what could be more beautiful
than you and I.”

. . . . . .

Hush, with a golden bolt   
I’ll lock the door.

— “Lullaby” by Itzik Manger (Translation by Lera Auerbach)

Breakage and Repair [by Lera Auerbach]

In early 2020, Yad Vashem – The World Holocaust Remembrance Center commissioned me to write a large symphonic work for cello, choir and orchestra related to Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat in Lithuania during WWII. Chiune Sugihara and Dutch diplomat Jan Zwartendijk helped thousands of Jews flee the onslaught and murderous march of the Nazi army by issuing transit visas through Japan to the Dutch colony of Curaçao. 

The Yiddish poetry of Dovid Hofshteyn (1889-1952), Peretz Markish (1895-1952), Moyshe Teyf (1904-1966), Avrom Sutzkever (1913-2010), Simkha-Bunim Shayevitch (1907-1944), Yisroel Emyot (1909-1978), Reyzl Zhikhlinski (1910-2001), and Itzik Manger (1901-1969) is at the core of the symphony.  

In Symphony No. 6 "Vessels of Light" I wished to weave together numerous voices, voices full of mystical beauty and everlasting courage, voices that carry history and manifest the continuity of spirit not by shouting but by whispering. To celebrate their unbroken essence and strength and in honour and memory of the Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, whose actions saved thousands of Jews – I implied the ancient Japanese technique and concept of Kintsugi to the form of this symphony. The subtitle of the work Vessels of Light connects with the concept of Shevirat ha-Kelim (Breaking of the Vessels.) I chose Yiddish poetry for the libretto – as a tribute to the Yiddish language. The language itself suffered – it lost too many people. The words of the poets penetrate the void, connect generations, guide us, and don't let us forget who we are.

What is Kintsugi? A technique of repairing broken pottery by joining the shards and filling the cracks with gold powder glue; thus, instead of hiding the repairs, it emphasizes them, making the objects even more beautiful and precious by celebrating their history and uniqueness. The philosophy behind this art technique can be profoundly translated into life. How do you apply the Kintsugi technique and principles to music? As the first step of working on the symphony, I set Psalm 121 for a Capella choir – this Psalm was often used as a talisman for travellers – an amulet of protection. During the Middle Ages, amulets with protective words (such as Psalm 121) were favoured because of their promise to protect the wearer from harm; such amulets offered "safe passage through the precarious world." After completing the Psalm, I "shattered" it; its fragmented musical material – without words – appears in the interludes, with the solo cello in a binding embrace that holds the different poems (parts) together, making them stronger and creating a sense of unity. The Psalm remains unsung in the symphony and will only exist in a bronze sculpture I have created as an integral part of this memorial.

The voice of the solo violoncello becomes the golden glue. It springs from Dovid Hofshteyn's poem "Violoncello," in which the poet addresses his soul, which continues to vibrate high and low through blood and suffering, eternally alive. The violoncello represents that which is unnamable – that mystical "string" that unites all Jewish people scattered across the world remaining mysteriously and multiculturally united. The solo violoncello – the golden glue of Kintsugi – in the act of bringing together fragments of lives and memories becomes Letopisets – a scribe of time. The lines of the Psalm are meant only to be read internally. The interludes feature male and female whisperers, symbolizing different people and stories woven together, helping to connect the broken parts – allowing them to become whole. The whisperers (unsung lines) and the silent Psalm (unspoken lines) in the interludes provide two additional levels of Kintsugi technique and work on different radiuses of consciousness from the movements of the symphony.

When I was approached for this project – I felt hesitant to accept it. It felt too heavy – too much responsibility. After having written two Requiems – Ode to Peace and Russian Requiem, I knew only all too well what it takes to face such a subject and become deeply immersed in it to give it form. I also knew that this symphony would strike a very personal string – my family's history, which I avoided facing directly throughout my life. My mother was born in 1940 to a Jewish family in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. As Hitler's army marched East in 1941, my grandparents abandoned all their possessions (including their beloved library and cherished collection of musical instruments.) They boarded the train – heading towards Siberia. The news of ghettos and the fate of Jews in Hitler's territories had reached them. All they could do was flee into the unknown. In today's context, the same trains with refugees travel west – a mirror retrograde of history.

The same railroad, for some, represented hope, while for others, it represented sorrow and loss of freedom. For many (as for most refugees) – it was the combination of both – hopes and fears, so tightly woven together that it was no longer possible to distinguish between them. The golden string that resonated through their lives was their courage. They carried the power of words and music wherever they travelled and passed it to their children. Knowledge was their most valuable possession. Books can burn, but songs are immortal; the vessels can break, but you can't destroy what they contain – the song, the spirit, the legacy, The Light.

Can the actions and decisions of one individual repair the world? Yes, Chiune Sugihara's acts and choices did, alongside a few other diplomats who were able to save thousands. They include, amongst others, Jan Zwartendijk (Acting Dutch Consul in Lithuania,) Ho Feng-Shan (Chinese Consul-General in Vienna,) Aristides de Sousa Mendes (Portuguese Consul-General in Bordeaux, France,) Charles Carl Lutz (Swiss Vice-Consul in Budapest,) and Selahattin Ulkumen (Turkish Consul in Rhodes.) The Righteous Among the Nations, honoured by Yad Vashem, are non-Jews who took great risks to save Jews during the Holocaust. Rescue took many forms, and the Righteous came from different nations, religions, and walks of life. What they had in common was that they protected their Jewish neighbours at a time when hostility and indifference prevailed.

Each voice weaves its melody into the fabric of history. Each voice matters. Brokenness is illusory. Yiddish poets Yisroel Emyot, Dovid Hofshteyn, Itzik Manger, Peretz Markish, Simkha-Bunim Shayevitch, Avrom Sutzkever, Moyshe Teyf, Reyzl Zhikhlinski, and others left an indelible heritage. Embracing their world also requires courage, but one of the essential human desires is the wish to remember, preserve, record, connect to the past, and pass the knowledge to the future. The beginning contains the end; its arch – a gateway. The form of an arch communicates a connection between space and time, seen and unseen, hidden and open. It's also a symbol of transfer – a passageway between the past and the future.

How do you capture grief? How to make that which is impossible to grasp – graspable? The poems selected for the libretto are vessels containing memories, some so painful as if every letter was a shard. Incantations of memory – letters to nowhere or forevermore – addressed to us, the living. Each shard is a mirror – we are reflected in them. The golden string vibrates. There are no shards – there are only words sung in a language, still vernacular, with words – alive, ancient, and young – the language of dreamers and poets, musicians, and scholars – people just like you and me; people who suffered more than most, who laughed, loved, and danced, whose fates intersected. People whose voices, never forgotten, share their stories of hopes and losses, wanders and wonders, sacrifices, and courage. Are we ready to hear them?

 

Who Will Stop the Madman – A Gogol's Prophecy [by Lera Auerbach]

My mother was born in 1940 to a Jewish family in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. As Hitler's army marched East in 1941, my grandparents abandoned all their possessions (including their beloved library and cherished collection of musical instruments). They boarded the train – heading towards Siberia. The news of ghettos and the fate of Jews in Hitler's territories had reached them – all they could do was to flee into the unknown.

A few years earlier, my mother's grandfather, Berl Fishbein, the head of the family, was tortured to death by Stalin's secret police). His only "guilt" was being born Jewish. While my family evacuated, their train was bombed by Hitler's armies. Another tragedy occurred: the family lost my mother's grandmother Ettel Fishbein in the confusion and chaos. She was grief-stricken after the death of her beloved husband, frightened and confused over all the changes and sorrows that the war and evacuation brought. Somehow, after the bombing, she was no longer with my grandparents on the train. They never found her and never learned of her fate. 

With my one-year-old mother, my grandparents deboarded in Chelyabinsk – a closed industrial city at the gateway of Siberia. I was born there some thirty years later. They never returned to their abandoned homes in Ukraine.

In today's war, the invading army marches from the East, and more than a million Ukrainian refugees head West – to Germany in a mirror retrograde of history.

Earlier this year, I wrote a cello concerto, Diary of a Madman, inspired by Gogol's famous short story about Poprishchin, a government clerk who gradually descends into insanity. The concerto was premiered last month by the Munich Philharmonic, Giedrė Šlekytė, and Gautier Capuçon. Nikolai Gogol (or, more correctly, romanized from Ukrainian – Mykola Hohol) – was a genius writer, born in Ukraine, father of Russian language literature, and a visionary far beyond his time. I have been fascinated by his work all my life. Ten years ago, while composing my opera Gogol, I read and re-read everything he ever wrote. After my opera's premiere in Vienna, I received an open letter from Russia calling me "Vrag Naroda" (Enemy of the People) – the same terminology used against Shostakovich and many other artists years earlier. My website was hacked, erased, and replaced by the slogan "Death to Jews" and a skull. It felt terrible, but I was not afraid – since 1991, I lived in the West, and since 2001, I no longer had any relatives in Russia. I was responsible only for myself, my words, and my actions. 

While composing the cello concerto Diary of a Madman, I did not think of Vladimir Putin. Now, Gogol's tale carries an eerie resonance. Diary of a Madman is a story of a lowly government bureaucrat with a minimal, easily forgettable personality. In his increasingly demented diary entries, Poprishchin claims that a state cannot "be without a king." As the storyline progresses, he becomes increasingly mad, starts having delusions of grandeur, and, finally, on the "43rd of April of the year 2000" he believes himself as the King. (V. Putin was first elected president of Russia on the 7th of May of the year 2000. Gogol wrote his story in 1835!) Finally, Poprishchin ends up in an insane asylum. 

Perhaps, Gogol, the visionary and one of the greatest writers who ever lived – could see beyond the 19th and 20th century – into the heart of the 21st, where we are doomed to continue the eternal tale.

I think of my grandparents and my child-mother in Ukraine, leaving everything behind, heading into the unknown – evacuating from the onslaught of Hitler's army. Could they have imagined that eighty years later, the land of their birth would face again a very similar nightmare and that refugees would now head West to Germany to save their children?

Gogol's visions and nightmares become a reality, with the whole world turning into a lunatics' asylum as the great tragedy unfolds. Who will stop the Madman? 

 

Interview with Tzimon Barto: Languages, Poetry and Education [by Lera Auerbach]

 I am always fascinated by people who are masters of more than one profession.  I interviewed Tzimon Barto for the Best American Poetry blog. His passions and knowledge run deep. Tzimon Barto speaks seven languages fluently, reads ancient Greek, Latin, and Hebrew; his love of poetry is contagious, his ideas about education are inspiring.

      

For a taste of Barto's music-making here he is performing Mozart's Rondo for Piano and Orchestra in A major with the SWR Symphonieorchester and Christoph Eschenbach.

 

Growing a Book [by Lera Auerbach]

 

© Lera Auerbach - Monoprint

 

A tree is never just a tree.

Physical distance one can measure.
But what about the distance from oneself?

(Too far – and numbness spreads.
Too close – and you fall apart.)

A book is a tree:
it needs to take hold,
to find nourishment and water.

In its early stages it is fragile,
while the hurricane season is coming.

Where do all unwritten books go?
Completed manuscripts waiting for editors?
Lost publications waiting for readers?
Forgotten lives?

Like a child, a book requires sacrifice.
Its birth is painful.
Ultimately, it is never yours.

Who are you?

You are only its tool –
(and a highly imperfect one at that.)

The Art of Falling [by Lera Auerbach]

Papa takes me to figure-skating school.
The school has classes every day: running, choreography,
floor gymnastics, figure skating. With skates over my shoulder,
we come to the school half an hour before the classes begin.
Putting on skates is a ritual. Papa ties the laces
very tight. I am wearing a woolen dress,
tights, and a gray hat with a visor and a pompom.

“Well, how was it?” Papa asks after my first lesson.
I am covered in snow from head to toe.

“I don't know. We were taught how to fall.
For the entire hour. Fall – get up. Fall again. Fall, fall, fall!”

“To learn how to fall,” Papa says seriously,
taking off my skates, “is an art form in itself.
Who knows, maybe it was your most important life lesson.
If you learn how to fall – nothing can harm you.
If you learn how to fall – you can be fearless.” 

 

MARIA - Dialogues on Stabat Mater [by Lera Auerbach]

Some works have parallel lives. In 2006 Musikfest Bremen and Lucerne Festival commissioned me to write a piece for Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica. As soon as I started composing it, I knew that it would be reborn as a theater work one day. I did not know at that time how or when. I thought of Maria, the Grieving Mother, and the Other Maria – the mysterious one who remained in the shadows, the two outlines becoming one, blending their voices in never-ending dialogue where one voice echoes the other. This weekend, in Nürenberg, Germany, will be the world premiere of the new ballet Maria, choreographed by Goyo Montero with Diana Vishneva dancing the principal role. How did it happen?

On May 14, 2019, I met with Diana Vishneva for dinner in New York after attending an art exhibition together. I have known Diana for many years. I wrote my ballet Tatiana (after Pushkin's Evgeny Onegin), choreographed by John Neumeier with Diana in mind, and she has danced it numerous times since its creation. Diana visited me in Florida earlier that year to explore our future collaborations. That spring day, in 2019, on the lower side of Manhattan, we spoke about my idea for the ballet Maria based on the music of my Dialogues on Stabat Mater. We talked about different ways how to make the ballet Maria a reality and who could be the ideal choreographer to realize it on stage. We both, at the same time, breathed out: Goyo Montero. I called Goyo from that restaurant, and he said: "Yes!" 

Dialogues on Stabat Mater is an experiment. I wished to create a frame, a dialogue, an outlook from our own time on the same subject as Pergolesi's celebrated masterpiece. And to base this dialogue not so much on the differences of cultural and harmonic esthetics between the 18th and 21st centuries, but rather on their similarities, which is much more challenging. The image of the grieving mother is universal, just as pain is universal, although its expressions may vary based on cultural or religious backgrounds. 

Dialogue can happen at different levels. Is it a dialogue between different times, a beginning and an end, musician and audience, soli and tutti, loneliness and understanding? Perhaps, after all, the difference is not that great between vocal and purely instrumental, sacred language and the vernacular, monologue, and dialogue? Any prayer is a dialogue even though the addressee may not appear present. To whom am I addressing this?

 

No Boundaries [by Lera Auerbach]

Sometimes I wish to press the knife against my skin and let out blood
because the world is growing within me, overflowing; it overwhelms me –
for how is it possible that the world is within me while I’m within the world?
Where are the boundaries between us?
Where do I end, and the world begins?
I step barefoot on the ground and feel the rotation of the Earth.
I’m falling through the universe at breathtaking speed while not moving at all.

 

The Audience [by Lera Auerbach]

 

If I were dead, I wouldn’t want to stay around. I would fly to some other realm where I would no longer be myself but everything else at the same time. A happy, joyful radiance of a realm. 

But I wouldn’t be able to jump there if my heart was too heavy with worry for my loved ones who are still living in this world. I would have to stay around to see how they are coping. The living become the responsibility of the dead. Maybe, if I stayed around, I could still help them somehow. 

My dead grandparents and their parents and the parents of their parents und so weiter slightly move their invisible bodies making room for the new arrivals. They watch how I write these lines in English – the language they never spoke and slightly shake their heads.

 

Making an Inventory [by Lera Auerbach]

 

Bruegel's Sky - Fragment [Photo by Lera Auerbach]

To live, one must make an inventory:

Item 1: The sky. It is everywhere.

 

Item 2: People. There are many of them.

 

Item 3: It is hard to believe, but there are still birds. They occupy space between people and the sky. Sometimes they touch the heavens; sometimes they touch the earth.

 

Item 4: Conceptual thinking.

 

Item 5: Garbage cans. Discarded objects, personal treasures no longer loved such as broken limbs of dolls.

 

Item 6: Cars. Be aware of them.

 

Item 7: The rest of the world.

 

The dead are watching the shadows caused by light. 

Inside of each shadow, a small invisible death is practicing the art of dying.

 

The Cat of Montserrat [by Lera Auerbach]

My memory: meeting a Montserrat cat –
she is sitting beneath Pablo Casals’ sculpture –
the true owner of his bronze cello
with whiskers sniffing mountain air.
It is Fall. It’s sunny, but the air is already
keeping a promise of the storms ahead.
I am now worried about this cat –
the cat that guards Casals and his cello.

Who will feed her during the winter?
Who will brush her tricolored coat?
Who will make her feel safe in the mountains?

I beckon the cat to follow, promising
to take good care of her if she lets me.
But the cat sniffs Casals’ dusty shoes,
raises her tail, and turns away.
I feel abandoned. I pray to the Black Virgin
to protect this proud feline. I ask Casals
to keep watch and play sometimes
for the cat’s hunting pleasures
El cant del ocells (The Song of the Birds.)

The air shimmers with hidden music.
The cat catches overtones – and the horizon shifts.

 

 

The Layers of “To Be” [by Lera Auerbach]

Labyrinth - Ink on Handmade Paper by Lera Auerbach

The verb “to be” is very short, yet it contains layers of existence.
It is possible to hide in these folds – that’s the secret of survival.
You share hiding spaces with ghosts, and ghosts become you.
You speak for them because, generally speaking, ghosts cannot speak.
But you can. Words flood your mind, and your heart can’t mend
broken words and broken promises. Your heart murmurs between the beats,
and the dead encourage it to keep on beating.

If I raise my hand – would my fingers touch the invisible hand of my nanny Marianna?
Or my grandma Alichka? Can love just disappear with the departed
or some crucial nothingness stays around, protecting you in moments of despair?
You can’t see the thread in the darkness, but you can choose to believe it’s there –
to guide you through the labyrinth of your own making.

The Shadows of Memories [by Lera Auerbach]

Untitled [Oil on Canvas] by Lera Auerbach

 

1. Forgetting Ignorance

The world is created anew. I often fail to see it and think as if it was still the old world that I knew. I forget my ignorance.

My mother doesn’t own a computer and doesn’t understand how the Internet works. It’s all mundanely miraculous and miraculously mundane to her. I try to explain but realize that I don’t understand it either. I can navigate it, but I do not know who or what is staring at me from the other side of the screen.

 

2. Reflection

I spit out blood from my bleeding gums and, looking at the sink, see my death.

 

3. The Shadows of Memories

One can think about so many things and nothing at all.
How can nothing be something?
How can nothing be?

Can a shadow cast a shadow?
Perhaps within each shadow lies a deeper shadow, just like within the first death, lies the second death. 
If a person can be born more than once, it’s possible that after he is dead, he dies again – a death within death from which it is impossible to return. In this second death, he loses not only his memories but the shadows of memories.

When did Eurydice die?

Songs in Minor Keys [by Lera Auerbach]

Leitmotifs [Photo by Lera Auerbach]

Every day I give birth
to my death. Each death is different.
They flutter around like moths.
I find them in dusty corners, in drawers,
or trapped in the spider webs
hanging from the ceiling. My deaths
can see my ancestors and talk to them.
My deaths sing to each other
children's songs in minor keys.
They prefer lullabies.
I fall asleep, listening.

Creation According to the Cat [by Lera Auerbach]

 

 

Oil on Metal Roof Tile [by Lera Auerbach]

When God created animals, He first asked each animal for their permission. But He never received the Cat’s blessing. The Cat just didn’t answer, and God took the Cat’s silence as “yes.” But the Cat simply needed some time to think whether to enter into existence. It needed to look through the open doors of creation and then decide if it wanted to be in or out, but God was in a rush and didn’t pay enough attention to subtleties. So, He created the Cat along with all other animals. Later, the Cat reprimanded God. The Cat said that it was going to answer “no,” that God created it against its will, and that God needed to compensate it for all the pain and suffering since the creation of the world.

It is why God bestowed the Cat with nine lives. This way, it could have additional time to decide whether to stay alive or not. That’s why the Cat, unlike others, can move through time – it understands its porous nature and knows how to slip through. The Cat doesn’t like closed doors. According to the Cat, a good door is a door half-opened (or half-closed depending on the perspective.) According to the Cat, one should always see both sides and be free to change one’s mind at any time. According to the Cat, things only pretend to be solid, but in truth, they are mostly empty spaces, and one needs to learn to see through their illusory solidity.

According to the Cat, one needs to learn how to disappear and, even more importantly, when.

 

The Еgg-matryoshka of Death [by Lera Auerbach]

Untitled - Japanese Ink on Handmade Paper [by Lera Auerbach]

1. Forever Present

Is there one more death within death?
And then one more death inside of that one?
And so on, so on, so on, infinitely dividing and dying again and again within each new division? The egg-matryoshka of death – the deeper we look, the smaller it becomes, indefinitely so. Et cetera. Et cetera.

Our time extends in both directions until nothing is left except the present everlasting moment.

 

2. Forgotten Memories

What happens to all forgotten memories?
Memories that are forgotten more than once?
Memories that lost their bodies of words and images?
What would happen if words lost their meanings and definitions?

My father is drawing the map of the dead.

 

3. The Kingdom of the Dead

The Kingdom of the Dead is far greater than the Kingdom of the Living. It is not surprising – all who are living, sooner or later join the Kingdom of the Dead, and as far as we know, the opposite doesn’t happen. If reincarnation exists, it still requires a new body, and the new body will sooner or later die – one can’t argue about that.

The dead are everywhere – we breathe them in with the air.

My father marks the graves of our deceased relatives on his hand-drawn map of the cemetery. I am supposed to find them one day. I wonder if I ever will.

 

4. Falling

The words fall from the sky like leaves from a tree.
Do fishes go to school?
I count visible stars – there are more of them than my fingers and toes combined, so I stop counting.

My father complains there are no longer any stars in the sky. He is holding my mom’s hand to stop it from shaking.

I feel I am falling,
falling,
falling…
while failing to make a wish.

 

5. C-sharp

The note C-sharp is what binds all stars and holds this Universe together.
At night you can hear C-sharp quietly buzzing. I imagine it as the endless string connecting and holding together heavenly objects, vibrating, and shimmering.

My umbilical cord was never tied correctly. If I could press my eye to my belly – I could probably see through my untied belly button all that is inside.

 

6. Flossing the Dead

Sometimes the dead are so thick in the air – it’s hard to breathe.

You feel your heart trying and trying to pump blood, but the air is too thick and heavy. The dead get stuck between the teeth, and no flossing can help.

The air bleeds history, and you can’t escape it – even in your loneliest hour, you are never alone.

 

 

The Loyalty of Toes [by Lera Auerbach]

Philippe Faraut's Sculpting Feet [Video Still Frame]

 

1. The Loyalty of Toes

You need to fall, and more than once, before you learn to fly.

Do the words fail me, or do I fail the words?
Words are strange beings, for they are certainly “beings” with their peculiar moods and caprices.

If toes are the fingers of the foot, why do we call them “toes” and not “fingers”?
And why are the fingers not the toes of the hands if the opposite holds true?

In Russian, there is only one word for toes and fingers – pal’tsi. If you want to be specific, you can say pal’tsi na nogah – “fingers on the legs'' or pal’tsi na rukah – “fingers on the arms,” but the word itself remains the same.

It’s surprising how rarely we think of our toes, even though they are always there for us. There is something very loyal in the toes’ devotion. The fingers could lead you into trouble, but not the toes. Toes have no agenda of their own. If anything, they may even help you escape the trouble that the fingers may cause. Yet, we rarely acknowledge their existence or notice their individuality.

2. Vanity

Back in Russia, I used to wear nylon stockings. It was considered impolite to have bare legs. The pantyhose tore easily; it was difficult to mend them unnoticeably unless the run, as they said, was in a place hidden from view.

I was fifteen. I didn’t like to wear stockings – they itched, but many girls wore them even in the winter while I wore two pairs of woolen tights, called gamashi. Winters in Chelyabinsk were brutal. Stockings felt out of place – a summer butterfly amidst the snow. How vain one must be, thought I, to endanger your health like this – just so your legs could shimmer naked through the nylon and appear thin and delicate.

Was I vain too? I did wear pantyhose in the warmer weather when, in fact, it was too warm to wear anything. Perhaps I was.

3. Emotional Body Parts

I wonder if different parts of the body can feel emotions. I don’t mean physical pain. Pain is not an emotion – it is just pain. It can cause emotions, of course, and often it does. But could, for example, toes feel happiness or grief? Could my toes feel misunderstood, sad, or lonely?

Every few weeks, my father trims my mom’s toenails. He does it slowly and carefully as her toenails tend to grow into the skin. He applies red nail polish and carefully blows on her toes as if blessing them individually in some archaic ritual of creation.

I examine my toes – the skin seems flaky-white, dry. I think my toes feel unloved.

 

4. Greetings

The multitude of things is overbearing. Each object needs acknowledgment.

– Hello, drawers.
– Hello, hairbrush.
– Hello, toothpaste.

Everything is made by someone or something, assembled, put together. Yet, I fail to put together my own body parts.

– Hello, toes, – I say to my toes and bend them.
It looks like they are nodding their heads in greeting. If toes had heads, that is.

 

5. For-granted

My mouth is dry; I greet the water. The water likes to be greeted. It tastes better in gratitude.

It’s easy to take body parts for granted. Their feelings get hurt, and that’s when we feel pain and have no choice but to acknowledge their existence. If you have a bellyache, you become aware that you have a belly and intricate intestines with all their wiring inside – even if you may not know precisely how it all functions. After all, if you didn’t have a belly, you couldn’t possibly have a bellyache, even though we’ve been told that phantom pains in missing limbs do exist.

 

6. Why Toes Feel Sad

The toes say “thank you very much” when you take off your shoes. The toes are mostly very polite, unlike the fingers. The fingers can be rude and prideful. The toes are humbler.

Babies like to touch their toes. Babies are compact and generally friendly to their body parts. They wiggle their toes and say hello to them. Or they say some other greeting in their baby-tongue. They try to put toes in their month. Their fingers and toes often touch each other.

But then we grow and get taller and taller until the toes are so far away from our eyes that we forget about their existence, and that is why toes often feel sad. Oh, the quiet sadness of the toes. At least they have each other for company. I wonder if it is enough.

Navigating Through Dreams [by Lera Auerbach]

Japanese Ink on Paper © Lera Auerbach

1. The Air We Breathe

This year we all learned how to wash hands. Perhaps, we didn’t learn but only made a lot of noise. Washing hands, sanitizing, staying in quarantine, balancing lockdowns. Victims of our vocabulary, we hold on to the relative calm. Death is everywhere, but it is also nowhere; it’s the air itself.

The ghosts are shimmering as if trying to conceal tiny openings in the world’s material – the porous nature of time and space. This year we learned not only to wash hands but to count our loved ones. Just in case they disappear through an invisible opening and slip into another realm.

 

2. The Need To Function

The world is a gigantic tuning fork, connecting distant galaxies the way overtones connect to the fundamental tone. Each moment everything is being created anew with each vibration.

One wouldn’t have any problems if one didn’t have to exist in the world. If you are just a soundwave and not a particle – do you have any concerns?  No. The problem is that we exist as both – soundwaves and particles at the same time, and more often, we choose to behave like particles, thus needing to function somehow.

The pull of gravity is at its strongest in the morning when you just returned from the abyss of nothingness. (The ghosts are shimmering as if trying to conceal tiny openings in the world’s material.) 

 

3. Navigation

What happens to the world when we are asleep? We assume that everything stays the same – the room, for instance, doesn’t turn into another room. The furniture remains with all its scratches or other peculiarities. We assume it is the same furniture, but how can one be sure of anything?

In the Quantum Universe, it is quite possible that in our sleep, we slip into some parallel dimension and wake up in a different universe altogether that only looks the same but is not. This is how and why divorces happen. One day, you may realize that the person next to you only appears to be the one you fell in love with, but in fact, is a stranger from an unfamiliar realm.

How to navigate safely through dreams?

(This year, we learned not only to wash hands but to count our loved ones. Just in case they disappear through an invisible opening and slip into another realm. Just in case…)

 

Block-flute [by Lera Auerbach]

 

Marianna and I are at a summer retreat.
I am five years old. I have a wooden recorder
with me, a block-flute. I blow out melodies.

My parents left – they have some urgent matters.
What urgent matters could there be during the summer?
I play my flute. Igor is here with us. 

He is a genius, a chess prodigy who has won
chess games against the former world champions.
He is my brother, and he has very long legs. 

When Igor walks, I must run after him like a dog.
I quickly get tired. Igor puts me on his shoulders.

I imagine myself as an eagle, a stormy petrel, a seagull.
Igor runs; I fly after him – I am the wind.

The wind plays the flute. Grownups lie.
I know – my grandma, Musenka, is dead.
That’s why my parents left.
I will never see her again. Ne-ver.

“Iga, do you know?” I ask, landing my flight.
 “No,” he answers seriously.
Igor is almost an adult. Grownups lie.
(He Knows)