Poetry for the New Year

Poetry for the New Year

A Rosh Hashanah Message

from Doris White, Financial Secretary

Congregation Adas Emuno

Leonia, NJ

Delivered on Rosh Hashanah

September 10, 2010

1 Tishrei, 5771

During this very hot summer, I talked lots of poetry with my friend Joan Klein. We shared favorites and suggested new poems and that talk enriched me and my dedication to words. 

Emily Dickinson has defined poetry in this way: She said,“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”  So hang onto your kippas or yarmulkas , and let me add that I know it’s poetry when the words echo in the crevices of my heart.


We remember at this season those who have left us, and we remember most deeply mothers and fathers.  “Those Winter Sundays” by the African-American poet Robert Hayden is about a father:

Sundays too my father got up early 


And put his clothes on in the blueback cold, 


then with cracked hands that ached 


from labor in the weekday weather made 


banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. 



I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. 


When the rooms were warm, he'd call, 


and slowly I would rise and dress, 


fearing the chronic angers of that house, 



Speaking indifferently to him, 


who had driven out the cold 


and polished my good shoes as well. 


What did I know, what did I know 


of love's austere and lonely offices?

Billy Collins speaks of his mother as he recalls a present he once gave her:

The Lanyard - Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly


off the blue walls of this room,


moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,


from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,


when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary


where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard. 

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist


could send one into the past more suddenly—


a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp


by a deep Adirondack lake


learning how to braid long thin plastic strips


into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard


or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,


but that did not keep me from crossing


strand over strand again and again


until I had made a boxy


red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,


and I gave her a lanyard.


She nursed me in many a sick room,


lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,


laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,


and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,


and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.


Here are thousands of meals, she said,


and here is clothing and a good education.


And here is your lanyard, I replied,


which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,


strong legs, bones and teeth,


and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,


and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.


And here, I wish to say to her now,


is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,


but the rueful admission that when she took


the two-tone lanyard from my hand,


I was as sure as a boy could be


that this useless, worthless thing I wove


out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

This is also the time of repentence to say I’m sorry--forgive me. William Carlos Williams in his poem “This is Just to Say” might help us:

This Is Just To Say 

  

William Carlos Williams 

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

I would like to end with a poem of blessing by James Wright:


A Blessing

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, 


Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. 


And the eyes of those two Indian ponies 


Darken with kindness. 


They have come gladly out of the willows 


To welcome my friend and me. 


We step over the barbed wire into the pasture 


Where they have been grazing all day, alone. 


They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness 


That we have come. 


They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other. 


There is no loneliness like theirs. 


At home once more, they begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness. 


I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms, 


For she has walked over to me 


And nuzzled my left hand. 


She is black and white, 


Her mane falls wild on her forehead, 


And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear 


That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist. 


Suddenly I realize 


That if I stepped out of my body I would break 


Into blossom.