"Sketch for Terezín/Does Grace" by Jeremiah Klarman
This TMF commission is dedicated to 2021 Terezín Legacy Award recipient Rochelle Walensky, in honor of her healing work as director of the CDC. It is a setting of two TMF-commissioned poems anthologized in our book Liberation; the poems appear below.
This TMF commission is dedicated to 2021 Terezín Legacy Award recipient Rochelle Walensky, in honor of her healing work as director of the CDC. It is a setting of two TMF-commissioned poems anthologized in our book Liberation; the poems appear below.
 Photo by Fred Viebahn
RITA DOVE has served as U.S. Poet Laureate and Poet laureate of Virginia. Among her many awards are the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, the Heinz Award in the arts and humanities, the National Humanities Medal from President Bill Clinton and the National Medal of the Arts from President Barak Obama.
SKETCH FOR TEREZÍN
by Rita Dove breathe in breathe out that's the way in out left right where did we leave from? when do we stop leaving? * This far west, summer nights cool off but stay light, blue-stung, long after sleep lowers its merciful hammer. * breathe left breathe right one two in out * There will be music and ice cream and porcelain sinks. carts of bread for the looking; choirs and gymnastics. I get to carry the banner. * that's the way keep it up in out in out where did we leave from when did we stop leaving * I was a girl when I arrived, carrying two pots from my mother's kitchen. It was October, growing crisp, my sweater soft as cream cakes, my braid blonder than the star stitched across my heart. * breathe breathe that's the way left right left right left right * no one asks what village I am from though I look out from its leaf-green eyes no one asks if I remember how the butterflies startled, churning up lemony clouds no one else nears the river chafing its banks the one road singing its promises going out * when did we leave from when did we stop leaving * if I am to become a heavenly body I would like to be a comet a streak of spitfire consuming itself before a child's upturned wonder |
 Photo by Noa Brezner.
ALMOG BEHAR is an Israeli poet, fiction writer, and essayist, a political-language activist of Mizrahi descent who writes in Hebrew and Arabic. He has won the Bernstein Prize, the Haaretz competition and the Prime Minister's Prize. His most recent book is Poems for Prisoners.
DOES GRACE
by Almog Behar Translated from the Hebrew by the author. The prayers of the fathers In the buildings of stone And in the public gardens of graves: The soil was caressed until mourning And the skies until tears. Now the cantor will call Now it is turn for the skies To crack naked in open wonder: If nature does not have a partner in the ceremony It remains lost in confusion. Only onto God no one bestows grace And no one listens to his prayers: People shout in the public squares How lonesome they are But how lonely is God no one can tell. Again the prayer goes back to the page Like the dove before becoming a metaphor: Routine is yet to be invented The dove still has a chance. |
