Helena Lipstadt
Dance translation by Charly & Eriel Santagado
Original Poem by Helena Lipstadt
Necklace
My name hangs
like a pendant
in the necklace of generations.
Link after link of h & n
Hannah is Hebrew for Grace
threaded through Slavic cities
washed new in the mikveh
to shine, a red squall between
my mother’s legs.
A name is heavy to carry
down the wide hopeful avenue
and light, after so many repetitions
so many prayers.
It dodges the fluid borders
of seven countries
collects the patina of a Polish song.
“The Lovely Helena”
whistled on the corner
hands in pockets
in dangerous times
a hiding place
of a name.
Burn a hole in the map of Warsaw
look through the ash circle
you can’t see
the flamed soul of Hannah
my grandmother wearing
her grandmother’s name
singing mine to me.
Every day I cast off her hungry voice
bear my light a blaze
in the eye.
A name is heavy to carry
and light.
Translation into Prose by Niko Popow
Inadvertently the pendant of my grandmother’s name passes the border of my teeth. It swims down my throat like an agile fish. Hannah. I can feel infinitesimal mouths inside me bearing the syllables away. Memories of Warsaw lodge in my esophagus as embers tickle the bronchial tissue. A whistling tune, “The Lovely Helena”, licks the avenues of my intestines, dodging the borders between countries, between organs. What’s left of the pendant brushes against my heart and diaphragm as if against the walls of an aquarium. Encased in the jewel is the ambient texture of time, as the hungry generations billow ever outward in a widening cone of light. Threaded through several slavic cities, I don’t know which tongue to use when speaking of her. Prayers and Polish songs encircle my neck like a necklace of tongues. Dangerous times and places impregnate the span of her name with a non-classical logic: it is light and heavy. It is nimble and full of weight and swelling with water from a red squall. Hannah is Hebrew for Grace. The kind of grace that can swell a basket with leaves. Look not for a tear in the eye, or the blaze of a cinder in the mug. My iris is an ash circle encasing the shade of Hannah: the shape of my soul.
