Once he held the stage
in his grasp
like no one else could
or ever had.
The audience would laugh,
cry and gasp at his performance.
His range was truly enormous.
Old men in their nineties
now dead would visit
his grave and lay roses
on the bed,
three quarters of the way
through the 20th century.
And teary eyed women would grab at
their clothes, shmattas,
as if renting them in mourning
when his name was pressed
on elder lips.
Maybe his costumes
now lie in trunks
in a forgotten place
with rare photographs in frames
silver nitrate laced.
How many times
have I wished
to have seen the great
Boris Tomashevsky to
behold his face
when he tread the boards
in the silent movie
but quite live
theater era years
in Old New York.
One of the greats,
perhaps the greatest,
of the Yiddish Stage
long ago passed.
And I hope this poem about him
will not be the last...

the apache kid