Big Man, Part Two
In a way I’m glad my Dad didn’t live to see October 7th. His old heart would not have taken it well.
On the other hand I wish he were here to help me put things in perspective. Every morning for some thirty years he read the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Jerusalem Post cover to cover. He knew a thing or two.
I’ve learned a lot since that terrible day— about Judaism, about Israel, about history, about hate.
This poem is not about any of those things. It’s about my dad and the slow, quick loss of him. It’s about a hand, and it’s about stones, and it’s about blood.
But I’ve been surprised by the degree to which those other themes have spilled effortlessly into this writing.
Jules Abramovitz was many things, but to be sure, he was a quintessential New York Jew.
Born on the eve of the Second World War to the children of first-generation immigrants from Russia and Poland, he was one of the last living embodiments of a world that is now gone. If you don’t know what I mean, watch the Barry Levinson film “Avalon.”
In some sense any writing about my dad is about Jewishness and Israel, about this impossibly hardy, too-brilliant, over-proud tribe of survivors— and therefore, obliquely but meaningfully, about October 7th after all.
I could say it this way: Perhaps any attempt, however messy, personal, and mucked up by a son’s tears, to describe a man like my father is necessarily an appeal for the humanness and complexity of his people too.
Big Man, Part Two
v
In the end
every frame a ghoulish flash
burning out the old reels when you
were new, the Great I Am, and
couldn’t help but carve your mark
into the mighty Book:
Lo Julesy
A complete unknown
A Magic Man
Christ & Harold Hill
Behold Julesy
Maketh a splash
Wherever he goes
(for whatever
that’s worth)
One night,
ensconced in your customary seat,
having ordered your mustard and ribs
in the customary way, with Abraham and Moses
observing gravely from their granite thrones,
you pitched your famous fastball,
flung wildly once again
for DiMaggio and Avalon,
only for the batter,
born an instant ago on Tiktok,
to amble off —
not even bored really just sort of like weirded out
If you couldn’t beguile
a waitress from Kuna,
couldn’t roll the universe
or even the Pacific Northwest
into a ball with a twist
of your harpsicord tongue —
then what remained to you,
you actor,
you killer,
you confidence man?
vi
You were good,
you never missed—
only you’d lost too much.
That was injudicious of you.
The Eternal Footman clutched your coat,
snickered, and commenced taking things:
He confiscated the pickles of Pelham Parkway,
your cardboard box agleam with scrolls,
and the painting you stole from Eden;
He took your mad Village life
and your mad Village wife;
The farm, the redwoods,
the white stones of the Holy City
which you’d wheelbarrowed madly up Ben Yehuda;
And the Last Family, precious and
slaughtered on the altar
you yourself built;
And the lost ampule,
the Glass Bead Game,
Alexandria,
and me—
And he stole Terry the Contender
and Bobby the Prophet (who used to care)
and Raskolnikov himself
strolling beside you in the
cool of the evening;
and the riverbed, the mountain,
the mesquite burning,
gaze lifted,
the ancient blessing—
Though much is taken much remains;
all of it taken, just leaves floating down
storm drains of Chelsea and Paris,
all strange now
and so gone.
vii
But he hadn’t
yet come
for your hand.
So we, your children and kinsmen,
anointed ourselves with oils,
gathered up sheep and turtledoves,
and congregated under the desert stars
to dance and to pray. The aroma
of sweet meats rose starward
as trembling we sang:
Leave the Big Man his hand that he might play.
And the Dark Footman snickered,
and then one night he took it,
wringing the last blood from your veins,
unspooling the scarlet from the tapestry of your love,
and without a whimper the keys
in your studio
fell mute.
In the end
he comes
for everything.