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José Kozer
This Is the Book of Psalms That Made My Mother Dance
This is the book of psalms that made my mother dance,
this is the book of hours my mother gave me,
this is the stern book of precepts.
Enraged and impelled, I come before this gaunt book,
I come before it like a rabbi to dance a sovereign polka,
I come before it in the height of glory to dance with ceremony a
minuet,
death's clandestine arm-around-the-arm.
Goose stepping, I come before it to dance while smoking,
I'm a rabbi who raised his gown in the Russian steppes,
I'm a rabbi that an enormous czar forces to dance before the bastions
of death,
I'm Grandfather Leizer who danced ceremoniously pressed to the
waist of Grandmother Sara,
I'm a damsel who arrives--all wanton--to expand the borders of
this dance,
I'm a damsel distended by a sudden confusion of the ankles,
but death imposes disorder on me,
and there's a vase falling in the large shelves of my room,
there's a lustrous and farcical misstep,
and my feet are like a loud bellowing of four generations of the dead.
(Translated from the Spanish by Orlando Ricardo Menes)
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