… led my father’s family from the forests
of Litva to the tawny African veld?

Lithuania – land of the shtetl; fiddler on every roof
and green cows floating in clematis-pink northern skies –

or so Marc Chagall saw it. But my father saw boots, bullets
bayonets and Africa seemed like a kiss on the lips from the

Tree of Life – a poisoned kiss perhaps, but a kiss, nonetheless;
far from the Motherland as any merchant-man ventured –

bearing Baltic pine – props for mine-shafts, tunnels –
a mile or more deep, beneath the savannah, bare-feet and snakes.

Africa – a fearful place of spitting cobras, malaria and the paradox of
old-new-world hope; of fearless Zulus with plugs in the lobes of each ear

and shamans who divined the bones and Xhosa women, faces chalked white,
sturdy-backed from hoeing the fields. Boere too, tough as the black-leather

that bound their family bibles. And Jews with yarmulkes
eating barrelled Baltic herring in brine; praying to their god –

a god of covenants and contracts – who seemed so bored, so unwilling
to do favours for his Chosen Ones. And Marxists of course, who tied their fate

to the Zulus and the Xhosas. But the Boere knew survival
and when the time came, they, who had seemed so unyielding,

bent with the yielders to yield. If ever I should visit Litva, you ask,
will I feel a homecoming? A connection? A oneness with my ancestors?

Or will I feel Litva is a place my people went to die? That green and
pleasant pastoral that belies the horrors of its past.

**

Michael Leibowitz was born and educated in South Africa where he worked as a medical practitioner. He and his family emigrated first to New Zealand and then to Australia. Leibowitz started writing poetry during the Covid pandemic. He has published two books of poetry – Looking In and Wardrobe of Secrets. His work has also been published in various anthologies.

P76 issue 9: Poetries of place/ displacement/ diaspora/ odyssey: On-line Edition. Table of Contents