Minsk Elegy
In the year 1942 my relative Misha Luditsky,
A student, volunteered to fight the Germans.
He deported Chechens and Crimean Tatars.
Never once did he taste of battle. He only witnessed
The inexplicable punishment of nations.
Stalin’s victory plan, so perfectly wicked.
In 1945 second lieutenant M.L. returned to the funeral of Minsk,
Eighty thousand Jews. But a handful lived.
He married the daughter of a Jewish butcher
From Komarovka Market, and a local party activist,
Daughter of Rabbi Chaim-Wolf, of blessed memory, my great-grandfather.
Thus we were related. Almost everything about it was messed up.
In the early 1960s Misha heard the sermons of the dissident General G.
He planned to join the Union for the Struggle to Restore Lenin’s Creed,
Repeated the general’s maxim that only rats belonged in the underfloor.
The authorities had a chat with Misha. He lay low, fearing arrest.
Worked in a construction trust. Smoked Bulgarian cigarettes.
Every now and then he would come to Moscow on a shopping spree.
Once I visited Misha and the family in Minsk. The year of the Olympic boycott.
They lived in a cluttered apartment on Avenue Zmitrok Biadula,
Named after the Belarusian nightingale, a Jew from around Vilna.
It was then I felt, for the first time, how time can history backward.
And I realized that life can get around on broken stilts
Of the past. It can barely move yet keeps at it.
And all the while my relative wouldn’t leave me alone.
He ambushed me in the living room beside a gramophone
And played a prewar record of a squeaky Yiddish song.
Son, tell me, does this grab your soul?
And all I could think was, you’re such an asshole,
As I nodded and trembled with genuine boredom.
Misha sat at the head of the table and gulped brandy from a tea glass.
Spoke about the gang of party thieves and drunks that robbed us
Of everything. Served the spiciest cholent and the sweetest tzimmes.
Eat some more, son. Tell us about yourself. Share your news.
Who do you have besides us? We’re all that’s left of the mishpocha…
And that’s what I remember about the Minsk vacation.
In the year 1991 they moved to Israel. O merciless Lethe.
I could never find them. The finest of repatriates’ rivers…
So many years have passed, it seems like it never happened.
Only a long drive back, the tallow end of summer in Belarus.
Only buckets full of purple plums left on the roadside,
Scabs of memory on the body of the murdered shtetlach.