Sy Roth- A Poem

A Picture in the Garden Book of Zion

Midway life’s journey I was made aware

That I had strayed into a dark forest,

And the right path appeared not anywhere.

Ah, tongue cannot describe how it oppressed,

This wood, so harsh dismal and wild, that fear

At thought of it strikes now into my breast.

Dante—Canto I—Inferno

Part I--When Real

discarded clothing warms the torpid ground

gelatinous figures stretched thin along the margins

hunger for their share.

frightened youth,

cap pulled tight to his eyebrows

shuts out reality

but can just see the whispering woman

mouthing words through her twitching lips.

stripped to camisole,

her being waits among the clutter they will leave

she, stooped vermin,

restive among the heaps of other vermin

their harbinger eyes ablaze in their just spring--

hands outstretched to hold back the sky,

that trembles.

dark visages for an inky Charon voyage

greet a netherworld wrapped in their silence.

others wait behind in sweaty clumps,

millenniums of them

twitching to the nearby, staccato pings

final authoring of a hopeful resurrection.

wrap themselves in prayer shawls

camel-ride into their sunset

arbeit set to the rhythm of the next burst of a

mysterious chorus on a Glenn Miller afternoon,

she, fearful that her touch would sear the child.

Part II When Shadows Fall

sweat of lambs

baaing.

bowing bleat of their mournful tunes

a Shema-marching horde

fades in the morass of sputtering prayers,

pitter-patter of a million small feet

goose-stepping to a raucous kettle drum

Wagnerian caterwauling adrift in the air,

gasps at the reality of their dawning---

interrogative hands stretch against the darkling sky

whispered curses whipped by an unruly wind,

pigeon-holed to their silent god.

Part III When Fiction

the galleries at the forest’s edge are filled with them

Silent watchers

a Chthonic monster chorus.

booty beckons

cursing the existence of the others

and their uplifted arms

and their frozen white bodies.

they titter in anticipation--

blast them all to hell for making them spelunkers-

beating their rat-a-tat drum solo.

deed done,

noisy crescendo melts them into the ground

shatters the silence of death

rapine, they pillage through the piles

hands drawn like hands in death rictus

scratching at the ground and the warm clothing.

smash their ears silent

against their own puffing wind.

Part IV Extinction

a sirocco of silence descends--

skritching cockroaches abide

in the refuse heaped

where booty a sea of velvet

litters the verdant fields.

the Valkyries,

restless ants,

cigarette smoke curling,

they waiting for the next picture

to be taken

seventh ring sealed.