Poetry Magazine

 

  Marcia Falk

USA


Credit: Marc Geller

Marcia Falk's poems, translations, and essays have been published widely in magazines and anthologies, including The American Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, The Penguin Book of Women's Poetry, and Modern Poetry in Translation.  Her books include The Song of Songs: Love Lyrics from the Bible, which was recently released in a new edition (Brandeis University Press/University Press of New England) and about which Li-Young Lee commented, "Marcia Falk’s translation of the Song of Songs remains unsurpassed for power, elegance, and music. Marcia Falk is a poet’s poet, and this is a real poet’s translation." She also recently published a translation of the poetry of the visionary-mystic Zelda, The Spectacular Difference (Hebrew Union College Press), which Amos Oz called "an exemplary translation of one of the most wonderful voices in modern Hebrew poetry." 

Among her translations from Yiddish is the volume With Teeth in the Earth (Wayne State University Press), a collection of the poetry of the modernist poet Malka Heifetz Tussman, with whom she shared a long friendship. She also has two chapbooks, This Year in Jerusalem (State Street Press), about which Adrienne Rich wrote, "These poems have the lucidity of etchings and the intensity of gemstones," and It Is July in Virginia (Rara Avis Press), which won the Gertrude Claytor Award of the Poetry Society of America and about which Heather McHugh wrote, "It forges new ground . . . these are odd, still, resonant poems, quite distinctive, at times almost revelatory."

Marcia is known in many sectors of the Jewish community for The Book of Blessings (HarperCollins; paperback edition, Beacon Press), a bilingual prayer book that re-creates Hebrew and English liturgy in poetic forms, from a contemporary, gender-inclusive perspective.  The result of thirteen years of research and writing, it includes new blessings, poems, and meditations, accompanied by a commentary.  Reviews have included praise from poets, scholars, and writers, among them, Cynthia Ozick, who wrote, "Marcia Falk's work on Hebrew blessings is as beautiful as it is innovative."

A university professor of English and Hebrew literature and creative writing for fifteen years, Marcia travels widely to college campuses, synagogues, and other venues to give readings and talks on topics ranging from biblical poetry to contemporary Jewish women writers.  A life member of the Art Students League of New York, she trained as a painter in her youth and recently returned to painting. She is currently working on a series of oil pastels to accompany literary texts. Her books and paintings can be viewed on her website: www.marciafalk.com.

 


MORNING MINYAN

 

A quorum of small black birds

has settled on the tree outside my window:

ten of them, enough to pray

the most sacred prayers.

Whom do they beseech,

for what do they pray

with their too-toos and dee-dee-dees?

Do they ask for grace?

Cannot be. They already have it.

Do they seek forgiveness? For what?

They cannot help but do what birds do.

Do they need healing?

Perhaps one of them has broken a wing?

Or are they singing the praises of the Creator?

Of the creation?

Of the many ilks and varieties of birds?

 

I would like to stay and find out

but I have no time this morning.

No time no time no time no time chants my species.

 

Dit-dit-dit, dit-dit-dit, dit-dit-dit-dit

cry the birds as they fly away.

 

First appeared in The Addison Street Anthology: Berkeley's Poetry Walk (eds. Robert Hass & Jessica Fisher; Heyday Press, 2004)

 

 

HAPPINESS

 

I was afraid.

I had been awake all night thinking about the warnings.

Thinking about being so far from my young son,

unable to get to him in time.

 

I went walking in the woods.

I walked and walked,

and the leaves were yellow and the leaves were red,

and I gathered some red and yellow ones and a few still green,

and talked aloud to myself, keeping myself company.

Under a huge maple tree, I stopped to sort them,

choosing them, one by one,

making a bundle to fill my arms.

Then holding them against my chest, I continued on.

 

I came upon another walker, the only other person I'd seen that day,

and she was weeping.

When she passed by me, she touched my arm,

riches on riches.

 

I was almost back at the field near the edge of the woods

when I stopped behind a big rock to pee,

leaving my armful of leaves at the side of the trail.

The rock was only a few meters away, but when I returned

I couldn't find the leaves.

I was distraught, and, even so, I reproached myself for caring,

blamed myself for trying to take so much with me

and for still wanting to, nevertheless.

 

And I remembered my son's face

and the light wet touch on my arm.

 

First appeared in September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond (ed. William Heyen; Etruscan Press, 2002)

 

 

PASSOVER LILY

 

Each of its ten fluted cups opened from a single thick stalk.

The first released its perfume like a blow,

taking the breath away;

the second opened gradually, its odor slowly seeping into the room.

By the time the third flower had unfolded

I was dizzy from the sickening sweetness,

blinded by the whiteness of the forms.

 

For a few days, nothing more happened;

then the others began to bloom and to wither, one after one.

 

I didn't pluck any from the stem

but left each to hold its place in the cycle of lily:

the delicate fragrance of the newborns mingling

with the sour scent of dried lily-milk on the fully opened blossoms.

 

Everything there, in a green plastic pot,

in the middle of the kitchen table—

the top-heavy shapes loping over the rim,

obscuring the view of my son's bowed head as he eats his breakfast,

the almost imperceptible dying

hovering over it all.

 

First appeared in Runes: A Review of Poetry, 2002

 

 

MY FACE

 

Three times since turning fifty, I’ve broken my face:

twice falling on the bulging sidewalks of my neighborhood,

once stepping into an elevator in a foreign city.

Up until then, my face had been mine.

Now I have scars: one on my upper lip, the other just above it

in the place the angel touches before we are born,

causing us to forget everything we know.

And my nose—it changed course so recklessly each time I fell

that I no longer recall where it started out.

 

When I look in the mirror these days, I meet a stranger;

everything about her needs deciphering.

Is she kind? Yes, there is kindness there . . .

Does she have a sense of humor?

Oh yes! Just look at those lines near the corners of her eyes—

though some of them may have come from squinting

or from crying; it's hard to be sure.

Is she a good conversationalist?

Well, I haven't actually heard her speak

but I can tell you that her mind is active,

moving from thought to thought

with just the slimmest of connections between them.

(These days, she tends to forget a thought

before getting to its end,

but I don't mind, I do the same thing—

neither of us is young any more.)

 

In the old days, I took my face for granted.

The gray-blue color of the eyes,

the homely dark hollows beneath them,

the odd asymmetry of its shape,

the mutability of expression—

all were known to me and, hence, unrevealing.

Now I study my face and wonder:

Whose is it today?

Who is this stepping out of the shower

to reveal her permeable desires?

Who will step back from the mirror

and go with me into the day?

Who will be there when I wake

and when I sleep?

Who will answer when I cry out in joy,

when I cry out in grief?

Who will keep me company and comfort me

when I finally become one with all my faces

and attached to none of them?

 

 

Two poems from the Song of Songs:

 

Poem 2

 

Yes, I am black! and radiant—

O city women watching me—

As black as Kedar's goathair tents

Or Solomon's fine tapestries.

 

Will you disrobe me with your stares?

The eyes of many morning suns

Have pierced my skin, and now I shine

Black as the light before the dawn.

 

And I have faced the angry glare

Of others, even my mother's sons

Who sent me out to watch their vines

While I neglected all my own.

 

 

Poem 24

 

Turning to him, who meets me with desire—

 

Come, love, let us go out to the open fields

And spend our night lying where the henna blooms,

Rising early to leave for the near vineyards

Where the vines flower, opening tender buds,

And the pomegranate boughs unfold their blossoms.

 

There among blossom and vine I will give you my love,

Musk of the violet mandrakes spilled upon us . . .

And returning, finding our doorways piled with fruits,

The best of the new-picked and the long-stored,

My love, I will give you all I have saved for you.

 

 

From The Song of Songs: Love Lyrics from the Bible translated from the Hebrew by Marcia Falk (Brandeis University Press/University Press of New England; 2004)

 

 

Two poems by Zelda:

 

Moon Is Teaching Bible

 

Moon is teaching Bible.

Cyclamen, Poppy, and Mountain

listen with joy.

Only the girl cries.

Poppy can't hear her crying—

Poppy is blazing in Torah,

Poppy is burning like the verse.

Cyclamen doesn't listen to the crying—

Cyclamen swoons

from the sweetness of the secret.

Mountain won't hear her crying—

Mountain is sunk

in thought.

 

But here comes Wind,

soft and fragrant,

to honor hope, to sing

the heart of each flying rider,

each ardent hunter

swept to the ends of the sea.

 

 

Heavy Silence

 

Death will take the spectacular difference

between fire and water

and cast it to the abyss.

 

Heavy silence

will crouch like a bull

on the names we have given

the birds of the sky

and the beasts of the field,

the evening skies,

the vast distances in space,

and things hidden from the eye.

 

Heavy silence will crouch like a bull

on all the words.

And it will be as hard for me to part

from the names of things

as from the things themselves.

 

O Knower of Mysteries,

help me understand

what to ask for

on the final day.

 

From The Spectacular Difference: Selected Poems of Zelda translated from the Hebrew by Marcia Falk (Hebrew Union College Press, 2004)

 

 

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All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.