[written october/november 2021]
i was poking around in an anthology the other day, and found something about one of my favorite poets’ work that kinda blew me away. i saw in the table of contents that among celia dropkin’s poems was one called “tsu lutsifer / to lucifer”. that wasn’t surprising; part of why i adore her work is its gothy edge. the surprise came when i turned to it and found not a single poem but a triptych: a first section addressed (as promised) to lucifer, and then two poems i know quite well. they’ve been printed under a few titles; their first lines are “ikh hob dikh nokh nit gezen / i still haven’t seen you” and “du kvelst, ikh kvel / you rejoice, i rejoice”.
both are intense and erotic: in “ikh hob dikh nokh nit gezen”, dropkin declares “i want to see how you sleep / when you lose your power / over yourself, over me / … / i want to see you / helpless… / i want to see you / dead.” in “du kvelst, ikh kvel”, she demands “burn me up, be burnt up / take up all my desire”. but seen as parts of a larger piece, especially one dedicated to the light-bringing fallen angel, they take on a whole new dimension.
i’ll put the triptych below, in yiddish and english – you might want to skip down to read it now.
the three parts move from a cold, compelling, dominating object of desire to a fantasy of a lover stripped of all power to an image of sanctified purgation through excess. so far, so wonderfully goth: creepy, hot, disturbing, cosmic.
but what gets my head spinning in interesting ways is that all of this is done with specifically christian occult imagery. there’s not a jewish reference point to be found, and, as in a great deal of yiddish poetry by women, there’s barely a word from the hebrew/aramaic side of the language, which bears liturgical resonances as well as everyday meanings (to be precise, there’s one: “תל / tel” [ruin]).
Continue reading “Ceci tuera cela”