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Excerpt from CAUGHT AGAIN by Gail M Feldman
BENJAMIN
Benjamin went to the source
respect for mystery in one hand,
cynical set to his open ears and eyes
.
Truth is not enough, belief too all-consuming
and the regular life -- the view from the honest lover's bed
and the table spread with necessities --
too nearly suitable.
So he said and meant none of it.
Thalia said, you cannot leave me
for an ideal you do not adhere to. Eat something.
The one thing he had was hunger
and he magnified it. His hungers
fed on one another.
He grew lean and quizzically happy;
soon sad and bitter, he ate to please her
and to learn if he had changed. He felt more the same
than before, and Thalia pushed him against walls
and beat on his shoulders to awaken him.
He was already awake and she knew it. Said Thalia:
You cannot be a thing that is nonexistent and has not existed ever and was not what you thought it had to have been anyway.
You are a Godless Jew and you should be happy to be in love with me.
Have children: make a life. Or go to the synagogue
and become a believer. You drag your atheistic laughter
to the pages, to the Besht. He cannot help you
and I can. I want to be your open page.
Your mystery's your magnet
and I am not mysterious.
Benjamin said, I love you.
Leave me alone. I am reading (fasting, being a person
who never existed). Thalia moved to Philadelphia
and Benjamin's beard grew.
He rocks in a parody of belief
and laughs at the Sabbath, and laughs
at his own miscalculations. What answer can help
if the question is not known?This poem appeared in the Bulletin of the Nagoya University of Foreign Studies in 1993. It also appears in Ms. Feldman’s novel-in-progress, The Tzaddik of Tsurumai.
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