RONI KADISH: WHISPERS Premier Poets 94 Sandy Point Farm Road Portsmouth RI 02871 USA $3.60 email Premier Poets Web design by This page last updated: 10th December 2007. |
RONI KADISH: WHISPERS | |
These ten poems are dedicated to a young son who was killed in a road accident. Each poem has a plain and affecting lyricism. There is passionate grief here but it is expressed with control; and a dignity that it is extremely moving. These are necessarily well crafted pieces; this from DO YOU UNDERSTAND: Each Friday at the cemetery After spraying the stone, You turn and say, "Let's go, it's late, We've so much to do." Perhaps you don't see the pebbles As I do. Trickling, rolling down the sides, Looking for cracks. Chattering into the crate, Box, casket, coffin — — sarcophagus — as it Was called in olden times. It won't do to think of other things: Flowers netted among the green, Trees curtseying to the grave, Butterflies lost in the haze, The sun caught in porcelain blue.In FUNERAL the mother has not discounted the possibility of death; she might even prepare for it in a country where death in conflict is almost an everyday occurrence. She thought he might die in the army, Burn in a tank, Prepared for the news. She sits on her wooden rocking chair In the kitchen, Burns her toast, Drinks coffee, Waits. She never dreamt of twisted metal On a country road.Always there is that incomprehensibility — the seeming pointlessness in the random death of a young person — from SHADOWS: Perhaps I could understand Your final flight To different fields Where flowers flame and flicker, Stud the sky, If you could tell me That you dance among stars, Scatter petals on a butterfly cloud.Ms Kadish has enabled the reader to share her grief in these poems — but not drown in it. If tears have fallen during their creation they have not been allowed to blur or make less subtle her delicate, though telling, imagery. | ||
reviewer: Michael Bangerter. |