Esther Lixenberg-Bloch

Esther Lixenberg-Bloch was born in London in 1952 and studied Textile Design and Fine Art at the Camberwell School of Art. In 1976 she immigrated to Israel. Esther has worked as a needlepoint and embroidery designer, taught art, dressmaking and fashion design, and has written poetry since childhood. Her poems have won honors in both the Reuben Rose and Miriam Lindberg poetry competitions. She has 4 children and 8 grandchildren.

The following works are copyright © 2008. All rights reserved. No distribution or reprinting in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  

Self Portrait

Today, a flat grey pall
masks near and distant hills,
masks olive, fig and pine,
and red tiled, cubist roofs
stack bleak, matt skies.

I wish…
                   to step into a different picture.

But I am trapped between
this frame and glass,
and batter flattened planes
to seek for hints
                  of volumes
                  or facets…

I am not sharply chiseled, as you would think.
Around me
ectoplasmic green
glimmers as grass.
But I know fields as lush
as Gainsborough’s, where you could sink
your hands into velvety texture,
                 and forget
                 and dream…

So you think my emanations
are one-angled?
I have the curious privilege
of feeling your reflection
and seeing mine,
in ghostly double vision
within a space-byte
from your eyes.

And you didn’t notice – did you,
in the swirling plasma of
brushstrokes around my
one-dimensional form,
that the broken grass stalks
weep blood?

And if you peered around the side
you might see a melting,
disembodied fear
                seeping out…    

  

Collective Memory 

The I has said enough
when it traced its finest lines
onto a smooth, glazed parchment
through the invisible screen of centuries.

The frame shifted slightly.

Buff coloured and intransigent
it started out,
but then it was soaked in a sea
that all our mothers bathed in,
and dried out on pegs that
stretched from continent to continent.

Strong, with elastic rhythms –
if I peeled it away from my face
it retained too many hollows,
too many forms
to make writing easy.

In time, children have come and prodded it-
but it doesn’t burst,

only, in some places,
deflated and creased into itself
still blurs the burning sun,
the icy frost.

And the imprints of a myriad cultures
have feathered it a fluttering colour,
veined right through like peeling rust.
Even as I dip my pen, my brush
into the ink of my mind
there is a process of oxidization,
and colours change
and mingle.

Oh my Mothers!
You can hear my scream through the centuries,
can’t you?
You [too] can recognize
the ornaments scratched on the margins
and the spilt cocktail stain in the corner.
For the center is still clear
with the light of the two white candles
burning brightly.

 

Cartographer's Flight 

Squinting at
plump olive trees
air-perforated
studded with
ripefruit, he saw
a land all washed with silver.

Save where
hot black asphalt
welled-up, Scratching
criss-cross lines.

Surprisingly,
the cities didn’t hum,
it seemed someone
had gouged
an opaque nothingness,
fluted edges
spattering shapes far-flung.

 Crinkled mountains
echoed
cling-wrap squished on plasticine
or scrunched
brown wrapping paper.

Bone and lump
of bedrock
bared uncompromising stone,
reduced to pebbly dots
on key-
too tiny for the naked eye
to see.

 And graduating tones
belie still steeper drops,
translate to mute meanderings,
skirt brown scrawled
ridges
 and
  descend
   to green.
Too bad the coast’s so near-
I don’t like getting my feet wet !

  

And Again it Will Bloom

If I am inconsistent,
watering the plants
only when I remember-
they survive,
straggling.

But when the sun grips my fingers,
sandpapering my palms
to release the sweat of memory,
or presses my temples with burning speech,
my months become wheels.
clicking the request for water
into a daily chant.

Then they will bloom.

But I have a problem
with the old brown enamel kettle
begged from my mother.
I am not sure of its place
among the flowerpots,
and it has not been appointed.

If I decide on its sterility
it must learn to take comfort
in its round bellied shape,
lidded hollow of satiated years,
with its handle like an arch
and its spout like a swan
that has not shed
its youthful colour,
and its envy of moist soil
and the shapelessness of change.

I am not sure, too,
which words have rooted well;
the words that are my small bones
eventually creep up,
after years of rain
to the top layer
and may be collected.

Please put them in the brown enamel kettle-
like an ossuary on the family porch,
where the archaeologists might ignore it,
(for it is brown and comely).

When another indigent
decides to tip the spout,
the words will water the entire garden.
And again it will bloom.
 

The Tailor’s Demise

I sweep –but realms of dust and dirt resettle;
I wipe –retrieving memories from grime.
The threads he dropped were veins of life unraveled;
in vain, I try to stuff them back in time.
I scrub. The loosened skins of flaking plaster
fall and shatter, crumble into dust and tears.
These porous walls stored weeping, joy and laughter
and stoked their hollows with his unsung years.
Now left with faded photographs and jumble,
I piece his life from letters. Did it fit?
Was the cloth that he was cut from  plain and humble?
Was his legacy of woven gold – or grit?