Sloan-Kettering: Poems

Abba Kovner one of the great Jewish Resistance heroes of the Second World War wrote these poems as he was dying of throat cancer at Sloan- Kettering Institute. They are clear and deeply moving . They reflect upon his experience in the Resistance in his many years of life in a kibbutz in Israel and upon what he is witnessing and living through in the moments of his last struggle. Behind them is the voice of a man of tremendous courage who is once again being tested as he so often has been tested before. I think these poems can be of great interest to all those going through similar tests. And they should be of interest to anyone who wishes to know more of one great human being's experience and poetry.

Sloan Kettering was first published in Hebrew in 1987 as an extended poema on Abba Kovner's terminal struggle against throat cancer. He died in Israel that year. Shadow themes and images subtly bleed through the skin of this work, in a pentimento effect that renders these 61 Eddie Levenston translations subtle, bold, and classic.Kovner was a Jewish Holocaust and Israeli wartime hero, larger-than-life, and one of Israel's most important poets. But these works, in a voice intensely human despite the enormous events that shaped it, describe the loss of his voice to cancer. Sloan Kettering nevertheless avoids self-pity or sturm und drang. Kovner regards his sons' photos and asks, "in their presence/ may one cry?" He speaks in understated irony. His grandchildren came for Hanukkah. "I didn't/ sing 'Ma'oz Tsur with them, you know why." He looses senses, without complaint, but will tell of it another time "if there is one." Of course, there won't be any more conversations. "Just as this one is no more/than the invention of a throat in ruins."Kovner's past is his "burden of molten/ rocks." He wants this to "stay in the archives/ it is not for the operating table." One poem instructing his heirs includes the first two words of the mourners' Kaddish -- Yitgadal veyitkadash (magnified and sanctified). Kovner next notes the greater suffering of others--and remembers God, reciting the prayer's third and fourth words--shemei rabba (is the Name). He relives his fight for the survival of the Europe's Jews. He shudders here, like he did then, "challenged to stand up for his right/ to live." Expecting another time when the world would again oppose the Jewish people, Kovner presciently warns, "The worst of all comes back." He asks, "Will we ever/ get out of this terrible forest?"In Sloan Kettering's silence echoes the great silence 65 years ago, when Jews had no idea where to turn and a Jewish prisoner was "cut off from his supervisor," lost and running from room to room....One encounters again "a pathless wilderness/ between yellow arrows/ and blue signs." Reflecting his furtive life in Nazi-occupied Vilna, he calls the New York cancer center "a trans-life corridor." The fingers of a black nurse mirror "the velvet pad where Mother/ kept her needles." Impossible circumstances forced Kovner to abandon her to save others. His mind and heart, however, never left her. His nights end by telling her of his fears, and about her grandchildren. "She should have a little joy/in Ponar."He recalls Itzik Wittenburg, betrayed to the Nazis on July 16, 1943, who hoped that going along would save others. In his cell, he swallowed prussic acid. "The gate is still open." ... "a nation holding its breath." Kovner 's metaphors also reflect the life that cancer patients struggle to keep, against hope and time. In a sense, they capture it too. Kovner describes a Thai man. His face looks like "Lost parchment/ in the heart of the desert."Kovner understandably has no more "trust in the merc

I'm not a big poetry fan, but this book is exceptional. I thought that a book about cancer would be depressing, but I found the opposite to be true. It's one of the most inspiring books I've ever read. And it is especially relevant now when there's so much talk about "heroes". The author was a true hero in the classic sense - a leader of the Jewish partisans against the Nazis, and he refers to that part of his life. But he - and many other people among us - are heroes in another sense: They are locked in a battle against cancer or other disease, and they fight it with all their might. The author is grateful for the magic of everyday comforts - his grandchildren's smiles, the rhythmic clicking of his wife knitting, the warm familiarity of his neighbors' voices. In spite of all his pain and fear, he has the guts to proclaim "death is not to be preferred". This book reminds us to cherish life.