Twilight Passages: Death Poems

By Hanoch Guy Kaner

The Yiddish writer Moyshe Leyb Halpern wrote, in his poem Momento Mori, “And should Moyshe-Leyb, the poet, say / That he saw Death… /Just as he sees himself in the mirror… / Will they believe Moyshe-Leyb?” These poems by Hanoch Guy-Kaner may occasion a like incredulity. After all, if, as Wittgenstein asserted, “Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death,” then what about the contending, equally experiential statement by Rebbe Bunam of Przysucha about himself that “All my life I have been learning how to die”? Hanoch Guy-Kaner does not care to explain or reconcile the seeming paradox----if there is one, or even to prefer one assertion to the other. Himself a poet, like Moyshe-Leyb, he too sees his long-familiar neighbor, Death, just as he sees himself in the mirror. Thus these poems, each of them a momento vitae, are each a kind of self-portrait as well. And as with late Rembrandt self-portraits, these poems too, in the words of John Berger, “contain or embody a paradox: they are clearly about old age, yet they address the future. They assume something coming toward them apart from Death.” A “something” which he, the poet, sees already, remembers already (and for which, it would seem, Death itself is the mirror). But will they believe Hanoch Guy-Kaner?

“Death stands behind you
On the supermarket long line
As other unexpected events”

Robert Margolis

We dread it.
We avoid thinking about it but it is present all the time.
The poems in this book are explorations of the unknowable and nightmares.
The poet pulls veils from what is beyond but so close and tangible for a journey like no other in which we call upon angels.spirits and souls.
We visit heaven and hell and hope to enter though the gate of mercy.

HGK

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jun 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781728362786

Hanoch Guy Kaner

Hanoch Guy, Ph.D., Ed.D., spent his childhood and youth in Israel surrounded by citrus orchards, watermelon fields and invading sand dunes. He is a bilingual poet in Hebrew and English. Hanoch is emeritus professor of Jewish and Hebrew literature at Temple University specializing in Holocaust literature.. He has mentored and taught poetry classes at the Musehouse center in Philadelphia. Hanoch has published poetry extensively in the US, Israel , the UK, Greece.and Wales. His poems published in Genre, Poetry Newsletter, Tracks, the International Journal of Genocide S tudies, Poetry Motel, Visions International, and Voices Israel and many more, He has won awards for Poetica and Mad Poets Society. Terra Treblinka was a finalist in the Northbook contest. He has won first prize in Better than Starbuck Haiku .contest. Hanoch Guy is the author of eleven poetry books

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© 2020 Hanoch Guy Kaner. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 06/05/2020

ISBN: 978-1-7283-6279-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-6278-6 (e)

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CONTENTS

The flowers are multiplying

I mourn

Little death

The Dead

Soldiers

Donna

Short

Rina

Mordecai Rigor Mortis

Upgrade

For Anne Sexton

The dead are enamored

Forest Shiva

Professor Gupta

For Beethoven on his 265 birthday

Masha

Perfume

Carefree

Journey

Those who die

By the gate

Shortly after I am gone

My final face

Bones supreme face

Skull facing the creek

Guessing

Kleinen Tod

Empty coffin

Long before my shiva

Just for a moment

My soul

Carry me gently

A must

Traditional Jewish burial

Exactly a year after my death

I am due in the snow

The Gate of Mercy

Out of