Twilight Passages

The Yiddish writer Moyshe Leyb Halpern wrote, in his poem Momento Mori, "And should Moyshe-Leyb, the poet, say / That he saw Death... /Just as he sees himself in the mirror... / Will they believe Moyshe-Leyb?" These poems by Hanoch Guy-Kaner may occasion a like incredulity. After all, if, as Wittgenstein asserted, "Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death," then what about the contending, equally experiential statement by Rebbe Bunam of Przysucha about himself that "All my life I have been learning how to die"? Hanoch Guy-Kaner does not care to explain or reconcile the seeming paradox----if there is one, or even to prefer one assertion to the other. Himself a poet, like Moyshe-Leyb, he too sees his long-familiar neighbor, Death, just as he sees himself in the mirror. Thus these poems, each of them a momento vitae, are each a kind of self-portrait as well. And as with late Rembrandt self-portraits, these poems too, in the words of John Berger, "contain or embody a paradox: they are clearly about old age, yet they address the future. They assume something coming toward them apart from Death." A "something" which he, the poet, sees already, remembers already (and for which, it would seem, Death itself is the mirror). But will they believe Hanoch Guy-Kaner? "Death stands behind you On the supermarket long line As other unexpected events" Robert Margolis We dread it. We avoid thinking about it but it is present all the time. The poems in this book are explorations of the unknowable and nightmares. The poet pulls veils from what is beyond but so close and tangible for a journey like no other in which we call upon angels.spirits and souls. We visit heaven and hell and hope to enter though the gate of mercy. HGK