How strange to encounter a family member, dead more than a century, in the thoughts and aspiration of his writing. This poem considers a great-grandfather’s Torah commentary—a text revealing his modesty, his common sense, and his bewilderment…the great vitality that precedes our vanishing.
—Jody Bolz, Poetry Editor
THE FINDINGS OF YITZHAK
Torah commentary: Vilna, 1912
This tattered volume, buckram binding
wrapped in foil, suede-soft pages
shredding as I turn them, opens backwards,
reads from right to left. Published
in Vilna by my great-grandfather Yitzhak,
son of Leah from the town of Mir.
I find it difficult to understand.
Yitzhak’s words, translated
by my friend, were humbly offered:
Just some random reveries
that floated up with the steam
of my tea, nothing like the findings
of the pious master teachers,
may their names be blessed…
I find it difficult to understand,
wrote Yitzhak, why the sun is greater
than the moon…why, though God declares
it is not good for man to be alone,
good men might have bad wives…
why some almonds sweeten on the tree
of life, and some are bitter.
He died in a pogrom in 1921,
crouched behind a tombstone in the Jewish graveyard. Yitzhak
Zincken, may his name be blessed.
I think of him this morning, of his
morning tea—the bitter and the sweet
of lives that float away like steam.
Jean Nordhaus is the author of eight volumes of poetry, including Memos from the Broken World, Innocence, and, most recently, The Music of Being. She has served as poetry coordinator at the Folger Shakespeare Library, president of Washington Writers’ Publishing House, and review editor of Poet Lore.