1After his death, her blood was glassthat shattered within her, my mother could not bleedor heal. Once in the moonlit snows of Franceshe offered his dark soul her breast.Now for her night meal, she staresat a little fish and vegetablesladled out of being,as if they were a family crucifix.Her work: etchings she holds up(the whorls of her fingertips stained by acid),small, detailed views of mountains,coastlines, complex clouds.Sometimes you simply have to repeata little of the design of the creator—nothing whatsoever made by man.               2My father could turn the word beinginto begging, into bed, into please,his son twists his legs around his own neck,man of rope, no farther from my fatherthan where a tree may root;I hang by my teethfrom a rope fixed to the roof,while the 19th-century French band belowplays ‘Art Is the True Religion’.I bite a stranger’s leather tongue.               3Juggler as poet, not the fire-eater,not the fat man, like father, like son:my chilly eyes and two hands keep three, four, ten,twenty clubs or white plates going in air,like after likes, the sins of the fathers,red silk balls, kept up in the air.I throw up household effects: his Hebrew Bible,a yellowing toothbrush, shoes and ties,his murdered family, his thanksthat it happened to them, not to him.I fling up against the crowdmy father’s head, red silk balls, white platesof the unthinkable, a way of mourning,Jerusalem remembered, synagogue as circus.Prophecy has fallen to sleight of hand,better to learn magic, better to changetwo blue eggs in a lacquer boxinto three fluttering white doves.               4Hanging on by a hair,on that night differentfrom all other nights,he could not pull himself outby a breath.He was something like hairwith feeling only at its roots.Coming from a musical family,he could not bear to hear music,he could not stophis constant, endless bleedingin private, in public,on the bread he ate,on my mother’s face.Drowningsent his life and blood offin water like smoke.His fingers were dactyls again.A fisherman found himdecomposing black belowNotre Dame Cathedral,where in the Chapel of Virtuesthe Virgin wept for her sonsurrounded by imagesof women without lives:Temperance, Fortitude, Justice,and Prudence with her three eyesto see past, present and future.Once his garments were warmedwhen Jehovah quieted the earthwith the south wind.The language of the psalmshas a different wordfor why asked in the pastand why asked in the future.Why lose the rest of spring, mon père?