Published in the anthology “Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust” (Time Being Books, 2007), Michael Alpiner’s poem David-Horodok gives us a glimpse into everyday life in David-Horodok. Michael’s ancestors, the Lansky and Mednick families, lived in David-Horodok.
David-Horodok
This town lives in me with the ache and cry of violin strings;
Gone now sixty years, it has the quivering stamina of memory.
A village once called sweet under white sky and dark omens,
Stained with the incessant ooze of mud and sabbath candles,
Blossomed with joy and color as the church bells
Knelled out their warnings like insolent children.
How does seven hundred years of history
Become extinguished like a wick between fingers so numb
They miss the flame’s last stubborn crackle and hiss?
They should have listened to the bells, heeded their threats,
Left behind the bushels of raspberries, cherry trees,
A cleaver in the butcher block, allowed the geese to escape,
Chosen what to wear, what gets brought and what remains,
Circle stains on the walls where pictures once hung,
The thatched roofs shading the cow, the hollow echo of prayers
From the synagogue, the voices of the children,
The voices of the children, their hauntingly harmonious cries.
With every sunrise came the new day’s crises,
Men at the dock, counting on fingers the haggled costs,
Yiddish swear words when mud swallowed a foot whole
Turning all shoes brown; barefoot children left their shoes home.
Good Samaritans would lay wood planks over the pools of mire
Turning pedestrians into circus performers, a medal of honor,
Washing daily in the Horin River, the true woman of valor.
It was the river that most defined Horodok, an artery
To the Europe that few would ever know: the steamers,
Barges, came daily, bringing goods and news from the West,
Lovers walked as slow as sunset on its banks,
Caressing the lip of creation, stealing a kiss under the wharf,
Bringing hope to a town that had more funerals than marriages.
In the town, little Hiah Leah sold fried goose skin and fat,
Lost herself among the livestock and religious students,
Grasses rich in pigment, all the jealous greens of the world.
Meir and Zev ran errands for the blacksmith,
Eager to learn a trade and earn a good wife,
Dream of pale skin and the miracle of woman.
Their mother taught them by example
That Horodok women are strong, shaped
Their destiny in bread dough with hands and fingers
Thick and gnarled as tree roots. They were sent to the ovens
Before they even had time to rise.