לכבוד אַ סטרונע (Lekoved a Strune)
by Rose Lemberg
Rose Lemberg lived in Ukraine, subarctic Russia, and Israel before immigrating to the US, where they work as a professor of Nostalgic and Marginal Studies. Their prose and poetry appeared in Strange Horizons, Apex, Goblin Fruit, Through the Gate, Mythic Delirium, Fantasy Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and other venues. They edit Stone Telling with Shweta Narayan, and has recently edited The Moment of Change, an anthology of feminist speculative poetry, for Aqueduct Press. Rose can be found at http://roselemberg.net and her Livejournal blog. The title Lekoved a Strune "in honor of a string" is a quote from one of Rose's favorite Yiddish poems, Avrom Sutzkever's Di Fidlroyz (The Fiddlerose).
it's leaving me,
the tree that grew from the letters of my life,
furrowed the notebook of my skin. But now it autumns
away into the earth I've left in water's memory.
There, I heard, the past was a golden rose,
there, I heard, the past is nothingness
growing through the muck like a fiddle.
I have melted wax into my ears, hid
myself from that music, but the rain finds me
even when the clouds are waterless, the sky
is the color of a worn coat stitched with thunder.
January 25th, 2013