SHIRIM: A JEWISH POETRY JOURNAL

William Pillin, 1910-1985, emigrated to the U.S. during the first part of the century. Between 1939 and 1985, he published seven books of poems. His final poem was ironically entitled “Yohrzeit.”

The following interview & poems, including “Yohrzeit.” were published in Poets & American Jews: A Collection of Poetry & Personal Reflections, the Fifteenth Anniversary Publication of SHIRIM.

Interview

Interviewer: When you first came to the U.S., how did you learn English?

Pillin: I took ill almost as soon as we came to this country and I was bedridden for some weeks. A friend, a companion from the ship on which we arrived, brought me American books — Nick Carter, Buffalo Bill, Horatio Alger. I swear I don't know how it happened, but I found myself reading them. In no time, I was speaking English. We lived in a Russian neighborhood where everybody spoke Russian and Polish; I don't think you could meet an English-speak­mg person on the street, so I spent a lot of time in the public library. I had gathered the limited vocabulary of the paper­back thrillers.

Interviewer: Do your poems come out of knowledge or discovery?

Pillin: I don't think good poems can come out of self-­knowledge, because self-knowledge is something which is complete in itself. What is the point of elaborating on a known quantity? I see no reason to write a poem about something which is known. Poems don't come out of sophis­tication or too much knowledge where the joys of spontane­ity and discovery are throttled. If I knew too much about myself, I'd never write a poem; I'd be showing-off and putting my best features forward, but not really writing a poem. Poems come out of the unknown, out of the mysteri­ous. They create their own light which illuminates through the creative process. There is a Hebrew word ephes which actually means "something," but carries a further mystical meaning of "creation out of nothing." I am always hoping that an innocence will take possession of me. Then, I can be startled, I can discover things, I can see the world with an astonished eye.

Interviewer: At seventy-years-old, are you having fewer innocences?

Pillin: Unless a man is ferociously attached to an ideol­ogy or a religion, I don't see how he can get to be seventy without disenchantment and disillusion. When I was young­er, I was passionately devoted to certain notions, such as Marxism, and I wrote a great deal more than I do today. I had more to write about. There was a far greater involvement with various aspects of life. I'm sure if I was still innocent in some respect, if I could restore a degree of faith - even if it is an innocent and unprovable faith — I would write more.

Interviewer: Are you a religious man?

Pillin: I suppose my religion is kind of anthropological. I would say that I am reverent before the God in whom I do not believe. It's rather important which God you do not believe in. I am not a believer in my Jewish God Jehovah, but I feel a reverence before the idea of God. I respect human thought and dreams, and God is central to mankind. I also love Jesus, but do not worship him. His story and personal­ity charms me, imbues me with a great sadness, and a greater sense of triumph, such as I hear in Bach and Handel.

Interviewer: Do you regard your poetry as being in a tradition of Jewish poetry?

Pillin: I regard myself as a culturally deprived Jew, having never mastered the Jewish languages and, in general, being only peripherally attached to the Jews, whom I love deeply. I think that lurking in my background are the poets of the Yiddish type or, as Irving Howe calls them, the sweat­shop poets. There is a Jewish mystique that I think is present in my poems. Let me quote a passage from Martin Buber, a passage which is the very quintessence of this Jewish mystique:

One eats in holiness, tastes the taste of food in holiness, and the table becomes an altar. One works in holiness, and he raises up: the sparks which hide them­selves in tools. One walks in holiness across the fields, and the soft song of all herbs, which they voice to God, enter into the song of our soul. ... One dances the roundelay in holiness, and a brightness shines over the gathering.

Interviewer: Why are so many of your poems sad?

Pillin: The Russian in me, perhaps. I was as always prone to melancholy; a quiet sadness runs through my veins. l have a love for the Russian songs which go from a deep melancholy to a manic gaiety. The ones you hum to yourself are the ones that are very sad.

Interviewer: What have you gained from writing poetry for over fifty years?

Pillin: I can't imagine that I've lost anything. Let's not forget the joyous discoveries we make along the road sim­ply by observing the landscape. I may have lost some time that could have been more profitably disposed; I've spent my life climbing from destitution to poverty. I gave to po­etry the time that I could afford to spare from the business of making a living. No sacrifices for my art; if you have a family, you've got to see to it that everyone stays alive and happy. I think that the poets who starved to death on park benches were first-class shnooks. In the lives of most men, there are three decisive elements (now I am talking like a Jew): his woman, his job and his kovid. Kovid is a Jewish concept of personal glory and honor. Your kovid is that which you do not require to exist, but which you do because you want to. Polia is my woman, pottery is my rewarding job, and poetry is my kovid. No, I don't think I'd want to change any of those.

Poems

Yohrzeit*

1.

A graveyard should be earth and stone,
a place of grief, not a flower garden.

Papa, Mama, you were interred
and I never returned —

for if souls are indeed detachable
why should they linger among mouldering bones?

2.

You smile at me
from beyond the shroud.

You smile
in a little glass of wax.

You are resurrected,
O tiny sun of memory!

Then you fade
into eternity's blue

until the piety of candles
summon you again.

*This is William Pillin's last poem, written on June 2, 1985.

Dream

My dreams return to where I was born, to
frozen fields, to lakes locked in white
silence. Wooden houses shine in the night.
Smoke rises from stone pits to the black
fir. I follow by moonlight tracks of wolves
and crows. How clearly this lunar landscape
is mirrored in my sleep! Only on wakening
do I recall that we fled the long winter
to the bright blue sea and soft air of another
land.

Electric Heater

When cold winds claw the window and breathe
through cracks and fissures, my portable
hearth whose luminous filaments rustle like
burning leaves, caresses all within its radiant
reach; and as it breathes on my chilled bones
I revel in the sway of acacias, warmed by the
gleaming conduit of the sun.

Saying the Shema

I must pronounce the Shema
before the blue frost numbs my mouth.

*

I will say the Shema now
because Death is rude and unexpected;
a voice frozen in midair.

*

If I am chanting the Shema
I can argue that Death is an indulgence
for which there is no time.

*

Shema is the sound of life.
Death is the forever beyond song or prayer.

*

If I say the Shema at night
just before falling asleep
I may not see the candle-wax visage
or hear steps on the windfallen leaves.