They Disappeared in the Night
by Rafi Aaron
They disappeared in the night as the white ash of
the fire went cold. They disappeared with the tales
the almond tree had overheard. Only the stray
mountain goat and the restless stones that
wandered with our people for years knew their
story.
You must understand they left us the way a leper
leaves you living in the weak house of your skin.
It was late in the life of spring how could this
happen?
We searched for signs; a feather from a striped
bird, or the fruit of the peach tree wearing the skin
of the elders. Who would lead us now? The voice
of reason was dead and still dying as we argued
into the next day.
Then the old woman spoke: A nightingale is only a
nightingale when it confesses its brightest colours
are hidden in its throat and a dog becomes the
animal we know when it pulls love out of the cruel
master’s hand.
And as the mangled tree straightened a branch our
tongues curled and no one spoke. And the silence
fell, and it fell like a man falling off a cliff without
having one moment to shout out his name, only the
silence filling his body, then the gorge, then the
lives of all who knew him. This was the traveling
silence, the twin of sorrow that knocks on every
door and never tires.
Photo credit: Ruth Kaplan
Rafi Aaron‘s book Surviving the Censor—The Unspoken Words of Osip Mandelstam (Seraphim Editions, 2006) won the Jewish Book Award for poetry in 2007. A documentary on Rafi’s poetic works entitled The Sound Traveller, produced by Endless Films, has aired on Bravo TV and Book Television.