The Old Jew of Jerusalem (and commentary on Poetic Prose)

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The Old Jew of Jerusalem
((An Old Man’s Reality; a Short Poetic Prose Piece) (Ecc. 1:11))

By Dennis L. Siluk Ed.D.

Part One

This poem is a poem of reality, perhaps Jewish as much as gentile.
He, the old Jew, knew whatever men talked about was where the heart was in man, is what they spent their money on: that they think they want, and after they get what they think they want, is only what they thought they wanted until they got it, because after they got it, the rush to get it faded like melting ice-cream. Perhaps this reality is as much Jewish as it is as much gentile, he said. Although he claimed he didn’t know much about anything, but he wrote about everything, as if everything was worth something and this something is what we all should care about, because it was reality—no matter which way you looked at it: end-up, upside-down, sideways, closed-eyed, wide-eyed, or puffed-eyed, it was all reality, one’s reality, which is more important than things that are not reality. And somewhere along the line, along man’s lifeline, man has to face the ultimate reality, and before he faces this ultimate reality he wants to leave something to be remembered by, some piece of reality you might say, like the fat turtle, who leaves his eggs covered in the sand. The fat turtle wants at least to have one of those baby turtles hatched from those many eggs to wonder one day, someday—any day will do, or one night or one afternoon—wonder if not realize to the fullest, and question out loud: “How did I get here?” instead of witlessly walking around thinking he fell out of the sky, or popped out of the ocean one day from nothing. Like it or not, this is reality—beckoning the: unforeseen, the uncertain, beckoning, the rusty silence, the horse’s gallop.

Part Two

No this isn’t a road intersected by anything other than you, in this reality poem, you are the one free to look, to branch out, find your paradise, softly or loud, but I’ve something else in mind: we are fragile, fearful, creatures, creatures that pretend; yes indeed, we spend more time pretending than living in reality; oh yes, reality, we forget to measure the weight of the moment, and then it expires on a lonely key, or on the palm of some dead hand now living in eternity. You see this old man also knew, that he knew, pride came before destruction, he learned that at first hand, the hard way, the so called, old fashion way, not necessary the Hebrew way, or the gentile way, but everyman’s way that came into this world from dust. And this is also a poem about that, how man’s way in life is sometimes wrapped in twilights and at other times in sunsets and sometimes in the dark abyss of the earth. He doesn’t live on lilac horizons—they are fairytales, although at times he thinks he does. He just keeps searching for it, never realizing it isn’t here or there, it’s up yonder in dream land, in our imaginations, or in our heavenly abode, but to make him realize this, we need to shoot a large cannonball blast alongside his…! Anyhow, remember that fat turtle—the mamma turtle, well, now do you remember the one little lone turtle—perhaps the only one that survived, the little turtle that survived, well the fat turtle is now saying “I hope you will be thinking about when I was here,” the problem is, the fat turtle is dead of course, and she was thinking that before death overtook her. And so, a live turtle is better than a dead shark. That’s the philosophy of the turtle species anyhow—or the reality of the situation.

You see the turtles are different than humans, they do not sit at home for days on end reading the newspaper, having coffee, or watching television, the football games, having a beer, they do what they really like to do, they don’t have all those many problems we humans have. They don’t have to worry about dressing warm or anything, they just pucker up and hide in their shells. Actually I would think summers are not very pleasant either for them—so they don’t have fairytale lives either. If we look a bit closer, they are the captains of their own ships—destinies, they got rid of their kids, who most likely, when they got old would pay them no attention anyhow, and just sit around waiting for them to die, and get what they can get for nothing, so a turtles reality, is perhaps on one hand, much better than a human being’s, they get out of the hot water before they get thrown into the frying pan, and they sail away, back out to sea. Wheeze by those big huge whales, and, I’m sorry to say, die after a hundred years or so, like a dog—childless, but happy. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Part Three

So he knew that also—the old man—and he said the more pride you have, the more you like to talk about it. Mistaken for something good—more often than not, when in essence, there is much stained blood in this sort of prideful reality, if not shame and insecurity—which has caused many of wars—, put fangs on desert rats, made man thirsty from Jerusalem to Persia, to Damascus, and put thorns on this poem. And in his convoy of thoughts on threads of reality, the more you endured, he said, the less you talked about it—and what you prized the most is what you protected the hardest—and what is taken from you, will be given back, and those who do the taking, will be taken from, and those who are the most thin-skinned, will be hurt the most in life. He said most people live in ghost cities, dream like ravens, sleep like bitter smoke, and have hardened dung when they go to the bathroom. This was his reality the old man proclaimed, and as much Jewish as it was gentile: this old man, this Jew who walked the streets of Jerusalem who walked the streets day and night, and I who walked beside him for a number of days, for many days, even I didn’t know his mystery. I even said to myself: sometimes he thinks he’s God, and at other times, a peasant and I said, nothing scares him, not even death, the only thing he didn’t like was someone sticking a needle in his … (you know what)!


Part Four

He liked prose, and he liked poetry, and as a result, he liked prose poetry, in reality he liked reading, so he wrote this as a prose poem for you, in poetic prose, for me to narrate for you, and said: like to like, they are like flags to flags—literature: windows to reality, although blinded sometimes are the writers of literature, but when we are made out of dust and dirt and clay, what do you expect. Not everybody knows how to love and to care; it is not suited for them, for they have a different reality. The Muslim doesn’t think like the Jew, and the Jew doesn’t think like the gentile, or European, as the European doesn’t think like the American, or Chinese, that is reality. But we all live in the same valley, “In my opinion,” he said “we are all like music though, all in a similar manner like music, in that, we all move about, crossing space and time, waiting for a face to see—a note, waiting for someone to come and stay awhile, empty for human contact—notes with notes, wanting more. And when we die, an age is ended as the heavenly kingdom rises, or the pits of hell open up for one, but before all this takes place there is stillness in the road.” Now don’t get me wrong I’m just narrating this. And finally he said, “The more money you make, the less people you want to know about it, liked to the more lust and folly you did, the more secretive you become—why?, because of it, because of its nature. That we know what is right and what is wrong, we just want to make the wrong right in the sight of those looking at us doing whatever we are doing—that’s reality: these are all threads of reality,” so he called them. Furthermore, He had figured the coward and the bravado had about the same amount of vanity, pride to shame. The more you lived the less you wanted to remember, so he claimed. This is what he said, told me. But death was behind a lot of this, otherwise I do believe, He never would have said what he said, or as much as he said, had he not known death was close by, and he knew after he was gone, I’d be left alone with this poem.

Some poems are my own, others belong to those others like the old Jew from Jerusalem, and I prefer either one. Poems are nice, but this one was too long to put on a wall and frame, so I told him, and he said, “Narcissus,” and “only a fool thinks of sunsets at midnight,” and I said, “I was in Alaska, in the Artic, and sun set was at midnight, it was called, ‘The Midnight Sun,’” and he said “Oh!” But he had all these sayings, and added, “You might be right, but don’t expect to get the goat and the rope,” and I said, “I don’t.” It was all really pretty silly I thought. He even found it laughable, and he had to have the last word and said, “For a bird that can’t fly, there are still lots of things he can do.” And that was that, and that was the last time we talked, but I’ll now give you some dialogue of what took place thereafter.

Part Five

Death came to him, early one morning, like a disintegrating seed, those pent-up forces of life, let loose, and it didn’t seem like reality to him (I’m guessing at this of course, as you might have figured out by now), he wasn’t quite ready to go, to meet his Maker, I do believe his intellectual activating forces of good and evil were in some kind of process of discrimination, but death is no respecter of men, man, woman, child or beast, he comes when he comes, and he separates one’s biology right on the spot, ties his soul, from physical life outside the body, and brings it into a new identity “Come with me,” says the angel of death, there is no more pretending, tears like rain might come, but that is reality, absolute and quiet efficient—he comes, like it or not, for the happy person who is complete as well as for the suffering person who is incomplete, he is not partial—he comes for the wise as well as for the stupid person, the insane as well as the mentally stable person, or well minded person; and there are more possibilities. Now there is also, an angel of soothing that may take over, and the dark angel disappears, in-between all this, you are most likely saying “How do things really look?” at this point. This is your new, reality: the angel of death picks you up and hands you over to the demon of the abyss or the angel of hope. And so death did come to the old Jew early one morning, and there was no more ideology to be reviewed for mankind to be eaten up by, and the end to shock was over right quick, he knew where he was, for some I suppose neurosis had just begun.

The Room

They came there only to find him dead, the second day, of the rotation of the earth—of this dying period; “What did he do?” questioned the first voice, a young man’s voice, full of life and spoil. I stood in the corner of his house and listened. I knew the old man was somewhere in this room and he was also listening, and he was free as when he was born, and perhaps now remembering. He never died when he was alive, inside himself he never died, and to me he was in that room listening. And remembering the moment of dying: putting it all together. I can’t prove this, but I felt this. And he is remembering the moment of his resurrection, which had already taken place, perhaps similar for a Jew as for a Christian—I’m not sure how a Muslim would fair in this situation, but I suppose it all depends—under the circumstances, I’m sure God will do his best under current conditions, but I don’t think, He’ll do any favors.
“I can’t remember,” I said, afar off in that same corner of the house, I just walked with him a few days in Jerusalem, and tried to learn a few of his dynamism, dealing with the principles of spiritual life.
“I don’t know what he did,” said the second voice, a neighbor, “I don’t really think he did anything, other than read those books laying all about here.”
I didn’t say a word; I just listened, figured the old man was still in the room, but would disappear into oblivion soon, memory loves light and kindness, and senses dark and dust, and ridicule, and no longer has time for such pity stuff.
“He must have done something when he was younger,” said a middle aged female voice.
“He wrote poetry,” I said listening to everyone.
“Maybe so,” said the neighbor standing and looking over at the dead body resting comfortable in his easy chair, the Bible opened to Ecc 1:11.
“Who’s going to bury him?” asked the young man.
“A decade or so ago, his wife passed on,” I said, because the old man had told me so.
“Folks never knew if he knew what day it was or season, thus until today, most of us in the neighborhood, never saw him… or much of him…” said the neighbor, “he was just an old man who walked about Jerusalem, or hid in his house harboring those old, very old books, reading them I suppose, over and over, and writing those poems, stupid poems of his.”
“He was once a great poet, well known worldwide,” I said still in that corner. And they all looked strange and odd at me, all had forgotten he was in the media more often than not, it was after his wife died he let go of life some, and today he had proven his point, that being: how fast would it be, before he was forgotten, before envy, and jealous, and scorn set in, before his poems were made fun of. Perhaps it was even faster than he had figured, or predicted, because the world had already been in the process of forgetting who he was—that was part of his reality. The essence of it was this: they forgot him and he forgot them in equal amounts of time, I do believe. As he would have said: like to like.
“He’s more than dead!” chuckled the young man, “he’s gone, all done and gone, forgotten. And after today, we’ll never see him again; I wonder what kind of poetry he wrote?”
I told the young man: “Someday you’ll remember this man, this day, and you will say, ‘I was one of the few that saw him last!’ and be proud in that fact alone, and be a little ashamed to have said what you have said today, and most likely, you will delete that part of the new conversation, to whom you are speaking to, in those far-off days yet to be.”’ And he laughed as a silly kid would laugh, you know what I mean, one of those laughs that says (and his subconscious puts into a vault for safekeeping), says: he’s more right than wrong: but I got to be strong in the moment and pretend, and youthful arrogance of the day comes out, rises like old dirty smoke, that if you stand in one place too long will choke you to death..
It would be only a few years after this day, there’d be no trace of him, other than in the few books of poetry he wrote, gone, gone, gone, he would be—just like the young man said, just like the poet predicted—but his poems would be quoted, his face that he grew and formed for so many years would be faded, only the words remembered, a few of phrases perhaps.
Speechless, everybody was to have found out they had a neighbor who was at one time so very famous, but more like a stranger, actually, less than a stranger, less than a human, here was a man who knew many poets, like: David Avidan, Abba Kovner, Yona Wollach and Ory Bernstein, Robert Bly, Donald Hall, James Wright. They had seen the dogs and cats and birds in the neighborhood more than they had seen him, and now he simple up and left earth, with no trace of his existence, other than leaving behind a few books filled with poems. Books he wrote he could not even remember the names of, and felt all the better for not remembering them. But loving the fact he had written something reasonable for man to read, feeling somewhat like that fat turtle, leaving something, perhaps worthwhile behind, after consuming so much of Mother Earth.

As the days went by and he was buried by the state, no one asked what had become of this old man in the neighborhood, no one remembered him in the first place, to have even asked, I mean no one—other than perhaps some scholars who read about his death in the newspapers, poets and teachers and philosophers.

When I looked out the window the day he died, it was to my great comfort, I saw the clouds parting, as a twirl of two shadows, wheezed by them, the angelic being put out his hands and the clouds bursts forth, spreading over like in the days when God parted the Red Sea way back when. I said to myself: boy! That’s a tinge frightful. And then at the end of that day, I was quite tiresome, and found a soft leather armchair and laid back into its nest, and my mind and body obeyed the laws of creation, and I fell to sleep.


Afterward: The poem you have just read, the old man wrote—for the most part—that I have narrated, as—he has, and named prose poetry, or poetic prose, that the old man told me not to question assigning it to such a category, “Just do it, because it is art…because it has some of the attributes of poetry, not because it is poetry per se, because it isn’t,” fair enough I said, I’ll do as you ask, and he simply continued with his flow of words, “because it gives the relations of man and nature, and man with his nature, to fate, with his imagination and dreams; because of its closeness and complexity of life. In so doing the mind clasps the beast of prose, its freedom and flexibility, as the mind clasps the living thing of poetry in a different way: its charm and humbleness of its art, thus, poetic prose is born, and poetic prose, or prose poetry has a glutinous tongue, that can silently lock doors behind you which never reopen but is to be heard, forevermore heard, with only a murmur, with only a whisper…whereas poetry or prose alone, sometimes have too much fact or mass, too much of a labyrinth to searched out. Consequently, this art I am talking about, has not been pressed by the weight of research…it has near mystical powers though—because it stands by the bull to express it impressions, like radium, glowing forevermore within our minds—likened to fragments of light. And this light, is as much Jewish as it is gentile, I do believe, or can be. We cannot ask prose to do what poetry does, if you wish to say more in a deeper way, it would upset the whole balance of the novel, moreover, this is why I preferred prose poetry not a direct opposite, but neither do I live under the rules of the novelists—all prose is prose fiction, like it or not, and many have a tendency against prose poetry, and the novelists do not want to take risks, which I cannot avoid. They trust the egg more than the chicken…I prefer a touch of rhapsody, therefore allowing energy on both sides. Those who prefer to not move with the flow, is perhaps out of popularity, and it is too eccentric to be satisfying. Here you have extreme vividness, surely not dull in comparison. Hence, you must remember, no single note will ruin my poem. So what you get from me, in simple terms, are impressions, a state of mind, one who has experienced them, not particularizing.”


No: 619 (6-4-2010/revised 6-7-2010) •