Poem | Augury
We buy the house next door to my parents, because dread is proportional to the years.
24
Jan
14
Nov
Poem | ALIYAH
Blessed are you, God our God, Sovereign of the World, who has given us the Torah of truth, planting within us life everlasting.
03
Oct
On Poetry | Nelly Sachs and the Poetry of Flight
Sachs dropped the masks that had let her speak through the murdered Jews of Europe and wrote from her own position in the world.
17
Jul
Poem | A Visitor in Herzliya
Many Jews arrive in Israel for the first time and experience a shock of recognition, as if the land and its history, both ancient and contemporary, were their own.
12
Apr
Poem | Ketubah
The ketubah, a Jewish marriage contract that dates back to Talmudic times, is an object of ritual beauty.
07
Feb
Poem | “The Last Jew in Vinnitsa”
Said to be on the back of a photo found in a German soldier’s album, these words have attached themselves to the image itself.
02
Dec
Poem | Portrait of the Poet’s Grandmother (Lighting Candles)
In many Jewish homes, lighting candles at dusk marks a shift to sacred time, the moment when the Sabbath starts—or a holiday, a yahrzeit.
26
Sep
21
Jun
Poem | The Season When My Life Turned
I have been the first person awake in my house every morning of my life.
13
Sep
Poem: The State of Things
On the day after Yom Kippur, I ride my bike along the waterfront.
Pious men build their sukkah before sunset.
Will they invite me to be their guest?
Priests and prophets are oblivious of emptiness.
The past is with me, an unhappy house
in my old neighborhood in Buenos Aires.
Across the river, platinum flickers.
There is a difference between dream and vision.
I want to describe the moon behind olive trees,
sunflowers against a black sky.
I want to keep the light that fills my bedroom
with the memory of a vacation home.
I want to fix what is broken before I can let it go.
The rabbi said one embrace can heal the world.
Cut off and childless, I want to know:
What sin did I commit? Which mark did I miss?
No one asks for forgiveness at the waterfront.
Longshoremen dance in Amsterdam.
The factory is gone.
I hear laughter in...