an old writer and his words

  • ISRAEL’S JUSTIFICATION FOR THE BOMB

    Once it was fur hatsmen on horsebackswords and torchesour villages casting a faint glowfalling into dying embers,here, one whose skullbears the mark of the hoof,there an old onewho would go no farther. Once it was a helmettanks for horsesflames contained in crematoriacities taken for the deservingwe, merely ashesshoveled into a pit,here a tooth, its goldtorn…

    Lou Faber

  • PARENT AGE

    I have two mothers, now both dead,I have three fathers, one unknown, one buriedoutside Washington and one lostin a corner of his shrinking mind.I am growing older, I have achesand clicks and pops and groans,which each remind me that Iam aware and alive and thatisn’t a bad way to start a new day.

    Lou Faber

  • IMPENDING DEPARTURE

    They finally used the wordor one near enough to itand she was not surprised,she almost welcomed it.You can grow jealous of thosewith a depth of faiththat a sentence of monthsor perhaps less is receivedwith grace and a smile, a nodand a statement “I’m morethan ready to go home now,back to my husband.”I hope I will…

    Lou Faber

  • SHARING

    It wasn’t exactly what you wanted, butyou probably wouldn’t have been all that upset.It was all about you, but not for you, thatcomes later, and we know you’ll be pleased.This one was for some of us who needed thisto be able to keep going, to keep from lookingonly back, into the darkness that is our…

    Lou Faber

  • ANYWHERE BUT

    I was twelve at the time, would havechosen to be anywhere but there.I hated visiting her at home, but thistook my disgust to a whole new level.We were never close, never would be,she so old, so old world, so unlikeanyone I had known, so like the womensitting outside the old hotels on South Beachwaiting for…

    Lou Faber

  • THE VILLAGE

    I’d like you to tell meabout the village in whichyou grew up, and how oddit must have been for youto have met my grandfatherso far from any villagein the heart of Lithuania.I suspect you leftwith your parents, exhaustedby pogroms, exhaustedby the Jewishnessthat to them defined you.I’d love to knowabout my mother whoI never got to…

    Lou Faber

  • HAIL AND FAREWELL

    On very dreary daysI like to drive through the cemeterymeandering among the stonesuntil I find a freshly dug grave.I stop, under the vigilant eyeof the caretaker and carefully placea cassette of Dvorak’s Slavonic Dancesor Smetana’s Die Moldau into the player.As the melodies spill forthI hope they lift the spiritof the resting, bringing them a momentof…

    Lou Faber

  • RIDING THE WASTELAND

    We set out with bold ambition, egos saddled and reined across a landscape left barren by our leaders who saw only carefully stacked boards and beams awaiting the master carpenter, great floral sprays dotting the lobbies of glass and chrome edifices, created in their own images. We ride in search of the promised land, and…

    Lou Faber

  • DEMENTIA

    He can remember it as though it was just yesterday. Actually it was just yesterday, but for him that had little to do with memory. Bits of his childhood would come flooding back: the city, the cousins who took him in for the few dollars his mother could offer. But his grandsons are a vague…

    Lou Faber

  • KIKE

    Third grade, religious school kikes, us, then a backhand raised, drawn, quickly dropped, below a reddened face, sleeve pulled up 145233 in black between elbow and wrist and a tear, perched fearing to fall. Never again, and nothing more, later, same arm ruffling hair, smoke clinging to aging skin, no older when he walked in…

    Lou Faber