Norbert Hirschhorn

Back into the Future
 
Have you ever been in a supermarket and seen someone who looked like your dead father? Spooky. Well, just yesterday, I almost called out to him, something I might have avoided when he was living. Anyway, we’d have been speaking in different dialects, like now with my children, grandchildren. If the future is a foreign country, it’s up to me to learn their language. Hard. Same deal with cities — built on ancient garbage they’re all meters higher now. If I put my ear to the ground, I imagine whispers, laughter, sobbing, cries of orgasm that layers of soil, mud, rock, volcanic effusion haven’t silenced. Those voices yearned for a future, achieved or not. Futures unachieved are only pruned or dead hopes — so when I try to remember my past, it’s to revisit the branches of what could have been; mostly journeys of regret. Ah, regret, a negative mirror, showing my back, walking away. We don’t go into the future; future comes into us. By the way, close up, he didn’t look like my father at all.

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Another Story About the Body
(a variation on a poem by Robert Hass )
 
My poetry went well that summer at the artists' colony, inspired, I suppose, by watching her. She was African, a flautist, 50-55, and, inexperienced as I was, I thought I was in love, especially the way she played, the way her body moved: supple, rippling, if you can imagine a muscular flute. I loved looking at her chocolate-satin skin, the way small moist beads formed on the bridge of her nose, & her deep-chested laughter after she fingered a run of trills. She always looked back at me, straight on, amused by my attention. The night we walked back from her concert she stirred in the ivory moonlight like a great ebony vessel. When we came to her cabin, she turned to me & said, I think you would like to have me. I would like that too, but I must tell you, as a little girl I was circumcised, & when I didn't understand, I've got no clitoris, my opening is narrow, scarred. It gives some men pleasure, me none. The radiance I'd carried around in the cavity of my chest faded, like rose petals. I made myself look at her when I said, I'm sorry, I don't think I could. She seemed to grow more immense, darker, & she stung me: You silly excuse for a man, is it only one thing you can do?


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Four Disciples
 
Master Wu Shei sent out four disciples, those readiest to benefit the world. He called Pupil Wei Min to his side to learn How each was spending his days. The first, Wei Min reported, teaches to hundreds across the country-side: Humility, compassion, evanescence, mutability. Wonderful, replied the Master, to show the road is to gain the road. The second acolyte incises runes on bone, blocks of wood, to be inked, printed on rice paper and wind banners. Excellent. He spreads prayers like clouds, moonlight. The third has retired to a grotto Where he fasts and meditates, meditates and fasts. Ah, a body in purification gives succor to us all. And of my favorite disciple, what news? Pupil Wei Min covered his face. ‘He reflects on the suffering in the world, does nothing but weep.’ Master Wu Shei rocked slowly. If I praised him, he would not be pleased. He rose, bent over and raked the stones.

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​
Variations on the Hand
 
His were large, fleshy, warm. Whenever he took mine, I felt comforted, safe. Lost in an air raid shelter once, in the dark, I felt about for his hand. After passing through some legs, some coats, became enveloped by his. I knew it.
 
Hers were small, bony, chilled. A sparrow fallen from a tree I feared to crush, but brought to my lips. Knuckles raised, swollen. I massaged them, gently. Why are you so sad?  I don’t know. I don’t know.
 
He and I greet one another in the manner of The Resistance:  Right arms swinging in an arc from the level of the head, each palm slapping into the other’s with the gusto sound of solidarity. 
 
‘Give a hand up, not a hand out.’  What am I to do seeing disheveled men sitting on cardboard holding signs written on by black magic marker: hungry, homeless, need money for a bed tonight. I shelter my eyes. 
 
Left hand wears a wedding ring. Right hand thumb on the detonator.

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​Things I Didn't Know I Loved

(after Nazim Hikmet)
 
finger-nail moon at sunset announcing my new month white fluff of cottonwood trees in spring dress   smell of first rain off warm pavements I didn’t know I loved 
 
I didn’t know I loved squirrels chasing across the high wire   or the moon  ghostly balloon floating in the pre-dawn sky  with beads of car lights crossing the river
 
autumn leaves swirling in windy circles like dervishes willow tree — a girl throwing hair over her eyes I never knew I loved
 
I didn’t know I loved that eagle pair rowing through air or the great white cutter sailing over the Mississippi — albino red-tailed hawk   avatar   come to bless
 
hummingbird hovering over petunias geraniums’ rebirth after old heads lopped   what pluck   missing her even when she’s in the next room things I didn’t know I loved

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I was the world in which I walked...*
 
Greyhound terminal   last bus to Duluth   homeless man on wood bench under a thin blanket   lone barista locks up shop   pocket park with hooded figures lean against trash bins  neon sign advertising grain bel  bee    full moon scowls like King Kong above a high-rise   late night jogger   fox crossing road disappears into shadowy hedge   café chairs stacked on tables   food vendor sleeping beneath his four-wheeled cart  Gate 37  Duluth   All Aboard   Now

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*Wallace Stevens, "Tea at the Palaz of Hoon"

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​Norbert Hirschhorn is a public health physician, commended by President Bill Clinton as an “American Health Hero,” proud to follow in the tradition of physician-poets. Hirschhorn has published seven previous collections, recently a bilingual Arabic-English co-translation with Syrian physician-poet Fouad M. Fouad, Once Upon a Time in Aleppo, Hippocrates Press, London, 2020. His latest collection, Over the Edge, was published in 2023, by Holland Park Press, London. He is now compiling a manuscript of prose poems.