Kaddish for Bobby Fischer
"To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else it will feed my revenge."
-- The Merchant of Venice 3.1.45-46.
Master made in Manhattan. A bastard self-sworn
to win and forfeit the world. Sly riddler
of sixty-four squares, he reeled down L-shaped
stairs in nightmares, smashing knights, skewering queens
in wooden wars where nothing knew how to bleed.
Nazis, Russians, Jews -- cat-burglars of his psyche --
wired his Holocaust in sanity's fall.
He spite-checked dawn, stalemated in loneliness.
Russian-rigged matches taught him to thwart all draws,
shrug-off a billion dollars, combust alone.
"The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark...."
Make no mistake: this game is against God.
It started with a child's dream of victory.
His heart, fast-forwarding always to gold,
a pole-vault past plodding school-days,
his jet-age gambit-of-the-mind: forever
scheming combinations to the rainbow's end.
Decades later, his comic books tattered,
his costly safes drilled open, mother dead,
a taste for gold piqued his Icelandic sleep.
Emptied of sacrifice, on his deathbed
he dreamed a horse-headed god, circumcised
angels; died with a one-eighty IQ
and guts full of Sushi. His last photo showed
bile, beard, and filling-less teeth.
Had he no feelings? Only long grudges
against races and nations? The "Hitler
of Chess" -- himself born to Jews -- broken, lost
and God, too, broken and lost, the rainbow
shattered, every piece exchanged, returned
to its dark casket. A game's funeral?
Or the world's, with all its players losing.
© 2023, Daniel E. Blackston
"To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else it will feed my revenge."
-- The Merchant of Venice 3.1.45-46.
Master made in Manhattan. A bastard self-sworn
to win and forfeit the world. Sly riddler
of sixty-four squares, he reeled down L-shaped
stairs in nightmares, smashing knights, skewering queens
in wooden wars where nothing knew how to bleed.
Nazis, Russians, Jews -- cat-burglars of his psyche --
wired his Holocaust in sanity's fall.
He spite-checked dawn, stalemated in loneliness.
Russian-rigged matches taught him to thwart all draws,
shrug-off a billion dollars, combust alone.
"The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark...."
Make no mistake: this game is against God.
It started with a child's dream of victory.
His heart, fast-forwarding always to gold,
a pole-vault past plodding school-days,
his jet-age gambit-of-the-mind: forever
scheming combinations to the rainbow's end.
Decades later, his comic books tattered,
his costly safes drilled open, mother dead,
a taste for gold piqued his Icelandic sleep.
Emptied of sacrifice, on his deathbed
he dreamed a horse-headed god, circumcised
angels; died with a one-eighty IQ
and guts full of Sushi. His last photo showed
bile, beard, and filling-less teeth.
Had he no feelings? Only long grudges
against races and nations? The "Hitler
of Chess" -- himself born to Jews -- broken, lost
and God, too, broken and lost, the rainbow
shattered, every piece exchanged, returned
to its dark casket. A game's funeral?
Or the world's, with all its players losing.
© 2023, Daniel E. Blackston
