Sculpted From Crevasses Poem by gershon hepner

Sculpted from crevasses, our brief lives
on Rushmore mountains never are recorded,
but may be in the memory of wives,
when sanitizing details that are sordid,
they’re seen in blinding moments like a holograph
whose two dimensions seem to them like three.
It doesn’t matter, if it makes us laugh,
embracing us with bourgeois bonhomie.

This poem was inspired by a wonderful tribute Linda paid to me yesterday in a surprise party for my 7oth birthday. The phrase “sculpted from crevasses” was first used by Susan Salter Reynolds in her book review of “Bearing the Body” by Ehud Havazelet (LA Times Book Review, August 26,2007) , which I cited in my poem “Carousel”:

Susan Salter Reynolds writes an enthusiastic review of the new novel, “Bearing the Body, ” by Ehud Havazelet, who is a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Oregon (“Mirror men, ” LA Times Book Review, August 26,2007) :

Some of the best novels are sculpted from similar crevasses in their characters' lives - a point where everything must stop so the protagonist can get off the carousel that his or her life has become. When Nathan hears about his brother's death, he simply walks away from his residency and his girlfriend. Sol is forced to leave his own ruts. These are often the times when we face our own humanity or lack thereof, when there is enough elbow room for epiphanies to squeeze out into the light. So much of life, Havazelet reminds us, is a fight against the lack of meaning, against emptiness. 'He carried it on him, all of it, ' Abby thinks of Daniel's sense of guilt, 'but it told him, unmercifully, by its crushing weight, who he was. While she, who probably should have married Dale, was weightless. Like Dale, she could end up anywhere, doing, or not doing, anything. What was her past, when she allowed herself to think about it? A dazzling emptiness, each day coming into place by erasing the one before it.' There is some fine and carefully researched writing about addiction in 'Bearing the Body, ' sympathetic and stern at the same time. Havazelet seems to say that life is a cycle of suffering passed down through generations. Nathan, Daniel and Sol are lost boys in a world that prizes integrity, doing the right thing and burying pain. In the novel's final scene, Sol, disoriented, has walked away from his hospital bed (he's a diabetic with an acute case of cellulitis) , carrying a box holding Daniel's ashes. And while Abby is passed out after a night of drug use, little Ben also runs away and wanders the streets of San Francisco, lost and afraid, forcing Nathan to search for both, the man and the boy.

5/5/08