I found today’s poem for National Poetry Month on the socials; most likely on Bluesky. So short, so intense; a shiv between the ribs, straight to the heart.
The poet, Rick
Lupert, is from Los Angeles and very active in the poetry scene there.
“poem”
America,
so Pretti.
America,
so Good.
Oh, sun,
melt this ICE
until we are
America
again.
©2026 Bas Bleu
Today at sundown, Yom Hashoah begins. This is the day commemorating the Holocaust. And in a time where RWNJs around the world are attempting to enucleate anything and everything from the past that does not comport with what passes for their worldview, it’s more important than ever to remember history, lest we be doomed to repeat it.
It's also Gratitude Monday, and my selection for National
Poetry Month is therefore Avrom Sutzkever’s “1980”. Sutzkever was born in what
is now Belarus; raised first in Siberia, then in in Vilna, Lithuania, and began
his literary career at the age of 17, in 1930. Following the German invasion of
the Soviet Union, he and his family were moved to the Vilnius Ghetto; he and
other writers hid works by Herzl, Chagall and others behind walls, saving them
for the future. Following the Germans murdering his mother and his newborn son,
Sultzkever and his wife escaped from the ghetto, and he fought as a partisan
against the Nazis. After the war, he testified in Nuremberg at the trial of the
man who murdered his mother and son; he and his wife lived for a while in Poland
and then Paris, before moving to Palestine (as it was then).
Sultzkever wrote first in Hebrew but shifted to Yiddish.
During an Aktion in 1941, Sutzkever escaped to the
countryside and was hidden by a peasant woman named Yanova Bertushevitz; she
and her husband kept the poet in their cellar and managed to smuggle food into
the ghetto to his family. (I must insert a note here: last week Israel issued a threat to any Christians or Druze in Lebanon who might consider sheltering Muslims/Arabs from invading IDF forces.) Eventually his worry about the danger to his
protectors and his family led him to return to Vilna, but he did not forget her
gift to him.
“1980” expresses Sutzkever’s gratitude for her courage,
kindness and humanity. It’s therefore the right poem for today—eve of Yom
Hashoah and Gratitude Monday—and also for the times: we all need to be reminded
that, even in a hateful and violent environment, we can choose to be human,
kind and courageous.
Because whoever saves one life saves the world entire.
“1980”
And when I go up as a pilgrim in winter, to recover
the place I was born, and the twin to self I am in my mind,
then I'll go in black snow as a pilgrim to find
the grave of my savior, Yanova.
She'll hear what I whisper, under my breath:
Thank you. You saved my tears from the flame.
Thank you. Children and grandchildren you rescued from death.
I planted a sapling (it doesn't suffice) in your name.
Time in its gyre spins back down the flue
faster than nightmares of nooses can ride,
quicker than nails. And you, my savior, in your cellar you'll hide
me, ascending in dreams as a pilgrim to you.
You'll come from the yard in your slippers, crunching the snow
so I'll know. Again I'm there in the cellar, degraded and low,
you're bringing me milk and bread sliced thick at the edge.
You're making the sign of the cross, I'm making my pencil its pledge.
Translated by Cynthia Ozick
©2026 Bas Bleu
For today’s National Poetry Month entry, we’ll go to Denmark. I did not know Inger Christensen (1935-2009) before now, but I really like her stuff. She didn’t view poetry as “truth” but as “a game, maybe a tragic game—the game we play with a world that plays its own game with us.”
Word.
One of her major works, Alfabet, combines the
alphabet and the Fibonacci sequence, which deserves major props, and it’s very
much in the “game” arena.
I’m giving you “From April: IV”, which has very
striking—grotesque, even—imagery.
From April IV
Already on the street
with our money clutched
in our hands,
and the world is a white laundry,
where we are boiled and wrung
and dried and ironed,
and smoothed down
and forsaken
we sweep
back
in children’s dreams
of chains and jail
and the heartfelt sigh
of liberation
and in the spark trails
of feelings
the fire eater
the cigarette swallower
come
to light|
and we pay
and distance ourselves
with laughter.
©2026 Bas Bleu
