we need witches

WE NEED WITCHES


We need witches more than seers,
and wizards more than wise men,
as we are aging, in arrears,
unable to reject the icemen
who come to freeze our sagging rears.

In old age some of us are Lears,
and those who think they are Falstaff
and hope to hide their primal fears
with levity and a false laugh,
can’t find the charity that cheers.

While we decline and sunset nears,
we know, because the iceman cometh
as surely as a dog has ears,
that we’re becoming like behemoth
that cannot be repaired at Sears.

Inspired by an e-mail Linda sent to Jane Liddell-King in response to her suggestion that isn't Lear was “like Adonai talking to Moses just before M. dies”. Linda wrote:

I'll have to think about Lear. Fascinating. Yes, I think Sh read the bible, the version - forgotten which - around then, and to be found in the library of the Earl of Oxford who G believes was Sh himself, due to background and notations on his books. Some people write Lear or Prospero in their old age and some Falstaff operas or sublime string quartets. I'd rather be Verdi than Shakespeare as far as that's concerned. But G writes the Lear stuff, though I can't believe it as he acts more like a spring chicken….Your flaring imagination however is valuable in a different way; I think it's transgressive and that's why it's not acceptable to normative Jews. We like order, we like science, we like cause and effect, we can't abide female passions and seeming illogicality. That's what men say and why they've seized Judaism from us. But we need seers and witches like yourself. Even if to compare it with what we've suppressed it with.Go to bed, Jane!
Love
Linda

© 2009 Gershon Hepner 2/16/09