Velvel's Violin E-Book

Jacqueline Saphra

• Herausgeber: Nine Arches Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 45

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Velvel's Violin, a deeply moving and political fifth collection by TS Eliot Prize-shortlisted poet Jacqueline Saphra places us on the shifting ground between past and present. Through its search for missing histories of the Jewish diaspora, the book is a call for empathy and a warning to a world where the legacy of the Holocaust echoes current narratives of prejudice, war, displacement, and migration. Saphra's precisely-tuned writing ranges through tones of dark humour, lyrical beauty and moments of transcendent joy to find assonance between the turbulence of now and a family history of fragmented stories, irreparable loss and miraculous escapes. Between each poem - forgotten songs, weeping forests, buried violins - sound and silence combine to speak of love, absence and survival.

Leseprobe

Velvel’s Violin

Velvel’s Violin

Jacqueline Saphra

ISBN: 978-1-913437-74-9

eISBN: 978-1-913437-75-6

Copyright © Jacqueline Saphra

Cover artwork: ‘The Blue Violinist’ (detail) 1947, by Marc Chagall © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2022.

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, recorded or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Jacqueline Saphra has asserted her right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

First published July 2023 by:

Nine Arches Press

Unit 14, Sir Frank Whittle Business Centre,

Great Central Way, Rugby.

CV21 3XH

United Kingdom

www.ninearchespress.com

Printed on recycled paper in the United Kingdom by Imprint Digital.

Nine Arches Press is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

For Granny Bessie, keeper of conscience

For Uncle Robbie, keeper of stories

‘Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.

Do justly, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated

to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.’

     – Rabbi Tarfon

Contents

ZEROEFESאפס

Prologue

ONEECHADאחד

Tomaszów Lubelski

Where?

Anxious Jewish Poem

Overheard on a Train 1

Diaspora

Jewish People in the Area

Poland, 1985

vintage führer

Oświęcim

Bavaria

o god

TWOSH’TAYEEMשתיים

Jew

To the Ones Who Pass

The Plagues are Everywhere

Overheard on a Train 2

Going to Bed with Hitler

The Trial

Family Tree

THREESHALOSHשלוש

Before the war

‘The Moment a Russian Helicopter is Shot Down’

Tank Taunt

Mercy

Yom Kippur

Overheard on a Train 3

Velvel’s Violin

War Games

Remains

20264

is the madness caused by the poetry or is the poetry caused by the madness

The News and the Blackbird

FOURARBAHארבע

Lox

Shmattes

Madagascar

Mezze with Ethics

Mazel

Peace be Upon You

Jankel

1939

The Trains, Again

Love

Notes

Acknowledgements and Thanks

About the author and this book

ZEROEFESאפס

Prologue

History becomes

Cassandra.

Done over

confused

she foretells

the past

and offers it

to the future.

As predicted

the project

is doomed.

The present

believes her

but doesn’t

consider it

news.

ONEECHADאחד

‘i can’t go back

wherever i came from

was burned off the map’

       – Melanie Kaye

Tomaszów Lubelski

We found the family house

at least we thought

it was the family house

it seemed to fit

the description

but nobody knew

the exact address

and there were

no records

Should I knock

and ask for a tour

I was not certain

that request

would go down well

after all I might be

one of the Jews

of the recurring nightmare

wailing for reparations

prodigal returned at last

to reclaim

what was not mine

Where?

Not this England tight with inference

and understatement, the marriages

recorded, christenings and funerals

dated, graves traceable and visited.

Not this England: edgy, hedged,

and fenced; the safety of the tribe.

Homeland, border, territory, clan.

Open your mouth and taste the word Jew.

How it lurks uncertain under the tongue.

Now try Belzec, Palestine, Diaspora.

Anxious Jewish Poem

Jewish Brits are quiet, mostly hiding

under hats and breathing lightly

eagerly inaudible in Jewish whispers

stretched and tuned to bashful British

as Jewish Deputies doff their kippot

and stand to sing for king and country.

It’s been a Jewish while since records of

a Jewish wave and you might say we’re safe:

we pass for now, and some of us do not

observe, do not observe at all, but

Jewish who would trust the territory: its

Jewish folds and shifts, ancient slurs

that blur on, cringe and bleed through skin

of memory? Jewish history churns, red paint

spits the yids, the yids, Fagins, Shylocks, still

the Jewish money gags, nose jobs, sentries

at the gates. So keep your Jewish head down

and your Jewish bag well packed and when

push comes to Jewish shove, as has been proved

and proved again, my Jewish friends, however

Jewish you are not, they won’t forget

your Jewish children and your Jewish god

your tarnished candlesticks, your stars

your rusty mazeltovs, your Jewish books.

Never assume. Accept your Jewish bread

unleavened; always be prepared to move.

Overheard on a Train 1

& all of queen victoria’s kids

were rothschilds

sorry

that’s wrong

i mean all but one

one wasn’t

it’s on youtube

rothschilds

nobody tells you that

Diaspora

I lost both my lovely uncles

one after the other

to another country.

Jubilantly they had passed

their examinations

and once equipped with

white coats and certificates

they poised to join

the gloried institutions

only to find corridors that reeked

of church and pork

of estrangement and handshakes

panelled rooms where their name

stuck to the roof

of the English mouth.

I lost both my lovely uncles

one after the other

to another country.

Just when we thought

we had arrived home

our shrunken family once more

found itself huddled over

indecipherable letters

despatched from distant possibilities.

I lost both my lovely uncles

one after the other

to another country.

On high holy days I spread

my grandmother’s cloth

I lay out my mother’s silver

and I miss my lovely uncles:

their blessings

and dreadful singing

their Jewish faces

blinking and flickering

in the candlelight.

Jewish People in the Area

Ephraim calls me on the phone before sunset

with a cheery Shabbat Shalom

Ephraim recently arrived from Brooklyn