Today, the Pennsylvania Center for the Book released the video of Poems from Life, a celebration of the lives of men and women living at Juniper Village. Juniper is a senior living center near State College, Pennsylvania. For the second year, staff at the Pennsylvania’s Center for the Book worked with Juniper to partner poets with the men and women who live at Juniper so that their stories and spirits could be told in poetry. It was nothing shy of wonderful, dignifying in the extreme and all done with expertly-crafted poems: some clever, some funny, some defiant, and all of them touching.
As I’ve written before, I was blessed to be partnered with Ernest Bergman (picture below). Ernie was born in Germany 95 years ago. His father died when he was very young and he was raised by his mother. A Jew, he and his family lived in Switzerland for a time. However, his work was limited, but he found that he had great skill in agriculture. Eventually, he had to flee Nazi-occupied Europe since “the bastards” would not conscript him and would have sent him to a death camp. He fled in a harrowing journey through multiple countries and made his way to New York. The poem I wrote, “A Man Who Came Home” (see below), tells some of this story using his own words, my impressions, and our individual and combined understandings of history and the promise of the United States for immigrants and refugees, something that’s pressing on us today, and something I address in my speech that starts my reading at just past 21:45 on the recording. Please watch and listen to all of the poets. Some of them are simply humbling and wondrous pieces. It was an honor to be a part of this program.
A MAN WHO CAME HOME
Deutschland called.
In ’39, der Vaterland called its men to reign.
Bergman, he was called.
Israel Bergman.
He was called.
The paper said he must
hear the call and come home and enlist.
He sent the paper back to Bern.
Ernest Leopold Israel Bergman he was
called.
The paper came back from the bastards. The paper
labeled him
stateless labeled him
a refugee
a Jew.
Israel.
His father died when he was three, his brother three months.
He was a man with no vater and no
Vaterland.
You, Israel,
will become like Mahler,
homeless and stateless
a Jew throughout the world
consigned to wander as
a man without a country.
But his home he knew was in soils across the sea and past the war
past Basel Luxembourg Belgium France
How can I get past? How much does it cost?[Money in hand.]
No. No monsieur.[Visa stamped.]
past Holland
to New York
soon to become a man who was
called
home.
Peter Walks for Democracy 