Even before I go to the dentist and then the memorial for Sutskever I have one of my little conversation with the invisible birds outside my kitchen. They are particularly talkative today after the thunderous storm last night, but they also find a little time to converse with me. I know what you’re thinking, but my cleaner heard me yesterday and swore it sounded like a regular dialogue.
Of course she’s on my payroll.
Shimon Peres opened the memorial for Avraham Sutzkever with a beautiful peon to Yiddish, and even read a poem in Yiddish himself. Then he sat through the two hour long program, as moved as every one in the audience. Although innumerable stars brilliantly performed Sutzkever’s work, in Yiddish and Hebrew, there was a space when I stopped listening. It was when his poem about the wagon of shoes dancing was read. There’s a passing English translation here but it doesn’t do justice. (I doubt that I could do better) What Sutzkever does in this poem is foreground the empty shoes of victims dancing in the wagon, identifying even his mother’s Sabbath shoes, with typical Lithuanian understatement. I got distracted by that poem, imagining the baby shoes of two of my baby cousins who were bashed against a wall in Zhedtl. Suzkever’s granddaughter, the actress Hadas Calderon, brought me back with her warm and genuine personal grief. But I came home with a headache.
Thank goodness I can go and say goodnight to the birds near my house, and then good evening to the bats.
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