Frederick Feirstein Verse-Virtual 2016 October

October 2016

I've been a practicing psychoanalyst since l984 and have been publishing case studies that read like short stories for years in places like The Psychoanalytic Review and The Partisan Review. For the past few years I've been meaning to publish a jargon-free book for the general public: The Man In The BMW and Other Psychoanalytic Stories but each time I'm ready to tie them all together I get waylaid by theater. Or a new book of poems. Finally my wife, Linda, and I are going to finish the book of ten "stories." If you're interested you can find the Man In The BMW on Google.

"Grandfather" in Winter

The overcoats are gone from Central Park
—In the sudden Spring.
A clump of leaves, that lay in in a white crypt
Of roots for months, loosens, looking for life.
Bare feet of hippies on the sunny walks,
Rock-heaps of pigeons bursting like corn, food
From brown bags, from white hands, from black hands,
Black and white kids kissing in the high rocks,
In the Rodin laps, in the hands of God
Above. Below, an old man, in a rough coat,
Wearing my grandfather's frown, lifts his face
Up to the sun and smiles smacking his lips.
His sky-blue Buchenwald tattoo has healed.
Below him in the skating-rink, a small
Girl, Jewish, repeats the rings of the park:
The rings of her father skating around her,
The guard around him, the rings of the pigeon-walks,
The rings of clouds, of jets, of the young
Sun around it. Me on the parapet,
The blood of the false Spring ringing my heart.
My wife beside me aims her camera at
The girl. The girl falls. The rope jerks. Nine
Iraqi Jews are falling through the air,
The Arab horde around them cheers. Shema.
The feet clump like leaves. The eyes turn up: white
Rocks. Israel in winter prepares again
For war. Around the gas-houses are the guards,
Around the guards, pogoms: Deserts of dead,
Miles wide and miles thick. The rings around
Her border are of time. Grandfather knows.
His dead eyes scrutinize my eyes. He knows
Tomorrow snow will fall like lead, the news
Will be obituaries, Kaddish will
Be sung. It is the eve of war again:
Shema.

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