Novel Excerpts
He was depressed. Almost as soon as the meal had begun, an uneasy feeling came over him and increased in severity as the evening progressed. Nothing seemed to relieve it: neither the solemnity of the Passover liturgy and the memories of childhood and the past it evoked; nor the softness of the sky over which the stars lay easily like seashells; nor the gentle gusts of wind that slowly stirred the upper branches of the cypresses lining the road that led into the yard; nor yet the familiar countenances of his comrades and followers who sat with him, as they had so many times before, at ceremonial table.
On the mossy, sloping bank of the river, father and daughter sat and watched the unceasing flow of the current. They sat side by side and, like the river, their spirits flowed. There was no exchange of words, but it was good for them to be there together: that very fact expressed what they felt. The water was beginning to turn its color in the light of the setting sun when they rose to walk home. Akira was on the verge of saying something, but he held back. "What is it?" Mitzko asked him.
​
"You had...a disappointment: it caused you a great deal of pain. Perhaps you thought I didn't suspect. I did - but I didn't know what to tell you; how to help you heal it..."
​
She stared at him in surprise.
"I'm sorry," he said simply.
​
"I've made my peace, Father."
​
"We all must."
Uri left his room and, without being observed, slipped out of the house and into the backyard. The moon had not yet come up and he could not see clearly, but he sensed that someone was in the yard next door. On bare feet, he sped across the cool grass to the hedge-to the exact spot where he had encountered Layleh that morning.
He was happy when he discovered that he was right: there was a shadowy form standing just beyond the high barrier of branches and leaves, seemingly waiting for him to appear.
With eager hands, he parted the branches and whispered: "I'm here…"
Golgotha
The Geisha's Granddaughter
A Forbidden Love
Bio
Born in Buffalo, N.Y., noted author and educator Chayym Zeldis went to Israel in 1948, where he worked on various agricultural settlements. He served in the Israel Defense Forces and in the Sinai campaign of 1956. He returned to the U.S. on a Creative Writing scholarship to the New School for Social Research.
Zeldis and his wife, Nina, settled in Israel, where both taught for many years at Tel Aviv University.
Poetry
We had it, we had it -- the violet hour,
We had the singed twilight for our own;
The lamps were headless and the years unformed,
And we had the silence in our hands
Like a seer's ball.
Today's face turns where there isn't any wall,
Today's heart yearns where the grass is dry;
There are shadows here that have forsaken masters,
And leaves of bronze that don't touch each other,
And light -- without ecstasy.
Appeal to black, numb trees and bloodless snow.
That are unseeing and beyond our clime;
Appeal to file-edged tongue of sky.
Then swallow soul's secret poison,
And seek haven in a hutch of rhyme.
Catch me
If you can --
But you can't
I've gone...
Escaped:
Down,
Down in the murk of deep memory,
Weightless into the
Ingot-shadowed hull of
The Past,
Far beneath the
Fractured surface of the
Remote present,
The blood of anxious voices,
The frothing of
The mad-dog world.
Blowing blissful bubbles at
The vast pursuit,
I visit
(One after the other)
The watertight compartments of
Days and years flown by.
Each chamber
As I enter
(Stooping to protect skull
and conscience)
Is freshly-swept, meticulously-camphored,
Ennobled,
In twilit-ardor safely sealed:
And calmly,
Where no one ever finds me,
I revel in the varnished-sacred
Gloamings,
And glowingly pretend
That somehow life is
Healed
Seven notes
born in the heart
Seven notes
bred in the mind
Seven notes kept mayhem behind
Seven notes
raft on the sea
Seven notes meant impregnable “me”
Seven notes
across trackless snow
Seven notes
at dawn’s fearsome glow
Tell me now
May I sing
those seven notes
with you
before
the song’s all through?
Seek Haven
Catch Me
Seven Notes