Passion: Poems of Love and Protest

By Judith Weinshall Liberman

PASSION presents a collection of 150 poems and lyrics written by Judith Weinshall Liberman during 2012. This collection is a sequel to REFLECTIONS, her previous anthology of poems, lyrics, and stories, created with her daughter, Dr. Laura Liberman.

Illustrated with photographs that highlight some of the people depicted in the verses, this collection covers a wide array of topics arranged in categories from love and relationships to looking back and remembering. Some of the writings are humorous, while others are somber. From the poignancy of First Love to the heartbreak of Losing a Sibling, Liberman captures the essence of what we feel when these changes occur in our lives.

Like life itself, PASSION covers the whole gamut of human experience.

Two-Way Street

Somewhere along the line I learned
Loves not a one-way street,

For if you take but do not give,
Youll end up in defeat.

So dont forget to give your love
To those of whom youre fond.

For true love is a two-way street.
Your love will seal your bond.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781475977219

Judith Weinshall Liberman

Born in Israel (then called “Palestine”), Judith Weinshall Liberman came to the United States in 1947 to pursue higher education after completing high school in her native city of Haifa. She earned four American university degrees, including a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School and an LL.M. from the University of Michigan Law School. While teaching law in Israel in 1955, she wrote a textbook on public international law in Hebrew for use by her students. After settling in the Boston area in 1956, she studied art and creative writing. Her art studies were at various art schools in the Boston area, including the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, the DeCordova Museum School, and the Massachusetts College of Art. She completed all course work for the M.F.A. degree in art education at Boston University School for the Arts and was certified by the State of Massachusetts as an art teacher. In the early 1960s, Ms. Liberman began creating some of her numerous series of artworks. She used a large variety of mediums in her art, including oils, acrylics, graphics, mixed media, wall hangings, sculpture, ceramics, and mosaics. She is primarily known for her artworks about the Holocaust. A book titled Holocaust Wall Hangings, based on one of her three series on the Holocaust, was published in 2002. Her art has been widely exhibited in museums and other public institutions in the United States and in Israel, and is represented in important museum collections as well as in the collections of scores of other public institutions. During her long career in visual art, Ms. Liberman wrote and published several books. Her children’s book The Bird’s Last Song (Addison-Wesley, 1976), which she wrote and illustrated, won a citation as one of the “fabulous books of the year.” Twenty years later, in 1996, she wrote and illustrated Ice Cream Snow, which was published as a children’s book in 2012. In 2007, Judith Weinshall Liberman published her autobiography, My Life into Art. Her interest in playwriting dates back to her college days in the late 1940s, when she wrote her first play. In the years that followed, she studied playwriting and wrote several plays. After reaching her eighties, Ms. Liberman devoted several years to writing plays and musicals. Looking Back, her first book of plays, was published in 2010. The play Good Old Abraham, included in that book, was performed by the Shades Repertory Theater under the direction of Samuel Harps at the historic Central Presbyterian Church in Haverstraw, New York, in the spring of 2010. Empathy, another play included in Looking Back, was used by Mr. Harps as the screenplay for a film. Her second book of plays, On Being an Artist, contained three plays and the libretto for one of her two musicals. Vincent’s Visit, one of the plays contained in that book, was staged by the Shades Repertory Theater under the direction of Samuel Harps in 2012. All four dramatic works in On Being an Artist deal with art as a creative process, a subject about which Judith Weinshall Liberman is eminently qualified to write. Ms. Liberman’s appetite for writing poems/lyrics was whetted by her work on her two musical plays, i.e., Good Old Abraham and To Be an Artist. Both musicals were based on her own plays. Ms. Liberman had written poetry on and off since her college days, but, although her own mother was a poet and had many poems published in her native Russia and in Israel, Judith Weinshall Liberman never anticipated that she herself would devote full time to writing poems and lyrics when she reached old age. In collaboration with her daughter, Laura Liberman, M.D., Judith Weinshall Liberman published the book Reflections: Poems, Lyrics, and Stories, in 2012. Each author contributed her own poems and other materials to that anthology. The present book, Passion, contains 150 poems and lyrics, all written by Judith Weinshall Liberman in 2012. Passion is the author’s ninth published book. Ms. Liberman’s archives can be found in the Fine Arts Department of the Boston Public Library and at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.

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Copyright © 2013 by Judith Weinshall Liberman

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this book are either the products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-7720-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-7722-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-7721-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013902877

iUniverse rev. date: 3/27/2013

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE

PART A: POEMS

LOVE

WISHES

FIRST LOVE

NIGHT SKY

MY FATHER

HIS DESK

DEAR FATHER

LOSING A SIBLING

DEAR BROTHER

I FELL IN LOVE

MOVIE STAR

OLD PHOTOGRAPH

VANISHED

LOOKING

I MISS YOU

NOTHING IS THE SAME

YOU COME TO ME

DREAMS

MEETING PLACE

I WAIT FOR YOU

WAIT FOR ME

ON MY OWN

WHERE ARE YOU, LOVE?

MY LOVE

I WAS NOT THERE

TWO-WAY STREET

RELATIONSHIPS

CLOSENESS

KIDS

HER SON

COUPLES

THEY PARTED

HER MOTHER

DIVORCE

MISPLACED ANGER

HIS PAST

SWIM DATE

ON THE BRIDGE

THE FIGHT

HOLDING BACK

HURT

PAIN’S LESSON

SISTERS

MY TRUST

UNRELIABLE

MY COMPOSER

HUMAN FOIBLES

ADVICE

THE CALL YOU DID NOT MAKE

WAITING

DONATIONS

NEW NIGHTGOWN

MY COMPUTER

CRISIS

FOUR-ONE-ONE

POLITICAL RIVALS

RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT

MIGHTY

GOD’S JUSTICE

WHY?

CREATION’S FATE

DEAR UNCLE YASHA

FACING BLINDNESS

I CAN STILL SEE

LAPTOP

POOR VISION

SMALL CHANGE

THE EYE OF A NEEDLE

DON’T BRING ME FLOWERS

YOU CRIED

REVERSION

OLD AGE

BANISHING DEATH

GOD’S POWER

HAPPINESS

BELIEF

SHOT

TODAY IS NINE-ELEVEN

DECEMBER 7TH

HANUKKAH

HATE

ANOTHER WAR

CHOICES

HUMAN SUFFERING

WHY ME?

PART B:

PHOTOGRAPHS

PART C: MORE POEMS

LOOKING BACK

TRAIN

REMEMBERING

HAIFA

THE HOUSE WHERE I GREW UP

SORE FEET

THE LAKE

WHIRLPOOL

OLD FRIEND

LETTER TO SCHOOL SECRETARY

SNOW

OLD HOUSE

SHE CAME TO ME

OFF TO COLLEGE

DISAPPEARED

MUSICAL

WINTER THOUGHTS

MY ART

PACE

MOUNTAIN CLIMBING

GIVING

IN TRUST

GRATEFUL

SEARCHING

REFLECTIONS

CREATURES

IF I WERE RICH

WHISTLING KETTLE

WHEN THINGS GO WRONG

WHEN I FEEL BLUE

MOOD

SHAME

ALONE

HEARING MY VOICE

ISLAND

NEVER STOP

NEW POEM

STRENGTH

THANKSGIVING DAY

MAGIC

MUSHI

WHAT NEXT?

FOX HILL RETIREMENT COMMUNITY

THE CHAIR

I BEAR MY PAIN

PASSING

ONE MORE FIGHT

MUSINGS

AFTERLIFE

FEATHERS

DOG MOTHER

EMPTY NEST

BOOTS FOR BARE FEET

PEBBLE

RECIPROCATION

BLAME

WRONGED

DENIAL

AFTER THE STORM

IN THIS TOGETHER

INEVITABLE PROGRESS

GLOBAL WARMING

TOGETHERNESS

GOALS

CAUSES

LESSONS

OLD LOVE

WASHING DISHES

THE WEATHER

ASTEROID

TODAY

THE OCEAN

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ENDNOTES

This book is dedicated with love

to the memory of

My husband, Prof. Robert Liberman

My father, Dr. Abraham Weinshall

My brother, Saul Weinshall

and to my family

My son, Dr. David Liberman

My daughter, Dr. Laura Liberman

My grandchildren, Daniel, Nina, Cynthia, and Deborah

PREFACE

Passion is my ninth published book. It contains 150 poems and lyrics. Unlike my previous book, Reflections: Poems, Lyrics, and Stories, which I published in collaboration with my daughter, Dr. Laura Liberman, and which contained materials authored by each of us over a period of decades, the present volume contains only poems/lyrics written by me in 2012.

Having spent the bulk of my adult life creating visual art, I shifted my focus to writing after reaching my eighties. At first I concentrated on playwriting, a form of writing I had done intermittently since my college days in the late 1940s. Writing plays led me to write the libretto for two musicals based on my own plays, and I so enjoyed writing lyrics for these musicals, that when the musicals were completed, I proceeded to write individual poems/lyrics unassociated with any musical play. In many instances, I had these poems/lyrics set to music by the same gifted young man who composed the music for my two musicals. In this book, the lyrics are distinguishable from the poems in that the lyrics contain a chorus, which is indented.

I never expected that I would become a poet/lyricist in my old age. Although my mother was a poet, I did not foresee that I would follow in her footsteps. And yet, I so enjoy this form of writing that I suspect I will pursue it indefinitely.

The 150 poems/lyrics in Passion are divided into 7 distinct categories - Love, Relationships, Human Foibles, God’s Justice, Looking Back, Reflections, and Musings - and are organized thematically within each of these categories. Some of the poems/lyrics are humorous, while others are somber. What all of them have in common is that they come from my heart.

Although the range of subjects covered is wide, each of the poems/lyrics expresses something important I discovered during my long journey through life. Like life itself, Passion covers the whole gamut of human experience.

I hope my readers find meaning and pleasure in my poetry.

I am grateful to my beloved daughter, Dr. Laura Liberman, and to my dear friends Jennie Jones and Judy Robbins, for their editorial assistance.

Judith Weinshall Liberman

PART A: POEMS

Love

Relationships

Human Foibles

God’s Justice

POEMS:

LOVE

WISHES

Now listen to what once

My grandma said to me

About her fondest wishes

And how they came to be.

"What do you wish for

Most of all?"

I asked my grandma

One cold day.

As for myself,

I always wished

For winter storms

To go away.

But my dear grandma

Didn’t speak

Of ice, or even

Snow or sleet.

She didn’t speak

At all of weather -

Of winter cold

Or summer heat.

She spoke of other

Things that were

So far from what

I’d heard before.

She said to me

In a soft tone

That made me listen

All the more.

Now listen to what once

My grandma said to me

About her fondest wishes

And how they came to be.

"My wishes now

Are not the same

As they were when

I was quite small.

I then wished great

Things for myself:

A young man who

For me would fall,

And then when I

Found my young man

And we were wed,

I wished for more,

I wished some kids

For us to have

To raise and always

To adore."

"And when you had

The kids you wished,

Did you stop wishing

For more things?"

I asked my grandma,

Who now had

That far-off look

That old age brings.

Now listen to what once

My grandma said to me

About her fondest wishes

And how they came to be.

My grandma said,

"When I had kids,

I wished for them

And not for me.

I wished for them

To grow up well,

Be good and kind

As they could be.

And then I wished

For them to have

A mate to love them

Every day,

And to have kids

Now of their own,

And raise them well

In every way."

"And then what happened

When they did?

Did you stop wishing

For more things?"

I asked my grandma,

Who replied,

"Life does its own

Surprises bring."

Now listen to what once

My grandma said to me

About her fondest wishes

And how