Naomi Replansky

Naomi Replansky (May 23, 1918 – January 7, 2023) was a Jewish poet who lived in the USA.

Quotes

• My spoon was lifted when the bomb came down/That left no face, no hand, no spoon to hold./A hundred thousand died in my home town./This came to pass before my soup was cold. ("Epitaph: 1945")

• Hungry, not one word here/is as good as bread.

• they swarmed everywhere,/the unwritten poems.

• They went hunting lions/But a flea attacked them/And their hunters' passion/Narrowed to a flea.

• No god came down, my brothers,/To breathe on them, my sisters./Their bodies made a mountain/That never touched the heavens./Whose lightning struck the killers?/Whose rain drowned out the fires?/My brothers and my sisters,/No angel leaned upon them./No miracle could shield them/From the cold human hands.

• I learned the speech of birds; now every tree/Screams out to me a baleful prophecy.

• All, all runs wild, all wild and uncontrolled./A toad hops from my mouth instead of gold.

• Excuse me for living,/But, since I am living,/Given inches, I take yards,/Taking yards, dream of miles/And a landscape, unbounded/And vast in abandon./And you dreaming the same.

• I was, I did, but I will let it be./Tonight I must hold dear/Whatever brought me here.

• I must learn again to give it welcome.

• The hunters hang onto their man/And merrily pass by/Where I scot-free and you scot-free/Stand in the shadow of Why.

• Born of a war, I was always aching and straining/To nuzzle myself into peace./Peace when it came was hunted and haunted, and stayed/Just for a moment.

• In silence is the smell of treachery, and sanction/Of hunger, and therefore I shout./But in the storm of sound I clothe myself/In a hush like fur.

• Unmade by what has made me

• When there was one kiss/against ten curses/and one loaf/against ten hungry/and one hello/against ten goodbyes/the odds stalked/your crooked steps.

• His praise like rain runs down the gutters

• My words may turn into stones/as easily as a man/turned one day into silence.

• Neither destroyed nor diamond/I walk from the core of your flame,/The rain does not hiss when it hits me,/And I answer to my old name.

• Tomorrow we cross/The borders of loss

Quotes about person/work

• Her feelings are deep and expressed without shame or coyness. She's straightforward. She offers the difficult product-clarity. She makes a music for which readers of poetry have been lonesome for years.
  • Grace Paley Collected Poems of Naomi Replansky