Preface: Elegy for My Uncle
To the divine silence of unreachable endlessness…
On the 19th floor of the window of Evan and Jim’s Manhattan apartment
I am reading the voyager instructions for my Uncle Morris Pokrassa
“Moish” born 1919 died 2001 on Long Island New York
I can easily call up his image in the easy chair
Dyckman Street near Broadway apartment
reading the New York Times the tremor in his hands from birth
Despite the cerebral palsy he could use wrenches and screwdrivers
He showed me when I was a kid how to work on a car engine
how to rig up a fishing rod even to tying hooks
and the thrill of landing that first catch
a three-inch sunfish was so great I never needed to fish
the ocean for sailfish or sharks
To the divine silence of perfected knowledge…
In one of these Manhattan buildings
my uncle worked for years delivering the mail to Blue Cross offices
wheeling a cart from the mailroom until his legs hurt
and when I would visit the City
he’d take me on outings to the Metropolitan or the Natural
History Museum and even to Carnegie Hall in 1961 or ‘62
to see Bob Dylan in his immigrant cap singing
“It’s a Hard Rain’s a’Gonna Fall” a thrill for me
while my uncle was skeptical
To the divine silence of the labyrinth guides…
This morning the Chrysler Building is a jeweled tower from a fairy city
Midtown is a computer board of energy cells
The sun breaks out of the gray sky and flames the City
and I see that another sun gleams on the parapets—
The Clear Light of the Void illuminates
every window of every apartment and office building
My uncle grins in his musty chair over the newspaper
and he is immersed in the Clear Light
For my Uncle Moish I remember myself as the voyager
Whose deepest nature is the Clear Light itself
I strike the closing tone blow out the candle leave the window
Downstairs the elevator of Evan’s building opens onto
“The blue light from the human dimension”
but walking distance not far away
right in this east side neighborhood I expect to find
jeweled temples and the gardens of delight
I.L. April 2001
