Untitled

By Samuel Menashe

The sea staves

Concave waves

Now

 By Samuel Menashe

There is never an end to loss, or hope

I give up the ghost for which I grope

Over and over again saying Amen

To all that does or does not happen--

The eternal event is now, not when

The Niche

By Samuel Menashe

The niche narrows
Hones one thin
Until his bones
Disclose him

Adam Means Earth

By Samuel Menashe

I am the man

Whose name is mud

But what’s in a name

To shame one who knows

Mud does not stain

Clay he’s made of

Dust Adam became—

The dust he was—

Was he his name

The Art of Blessing the Day

 By Marge Piercy

This is the blessing for rain after drought:

Come down, wash the air so it shimmers,

a perfumed shawl of lavender chiffon.

Let the parched leaves suckle and swell.

Enter my skin; wash me for the little

chrysalis of sleep rocked in your plashing.

In the morning the world is peeled to shining.

This is the blessing for sun after long rain:

Now everything shakes itself free and rises.

The trees are bright as pushcart ices.

Every last lily opens its satin thighs.

The bees dance and roll in pollen

and the cardinal at the top of the pine

sings at full throttle, fountaining.

This is the blessing for a ripe peach:

This is luck made round. Frost can nip

the blossom, kill the bee. It can drop,

a hard green useless nut. Brown fungus,

the burrowing worm that coils in rot can

blemish it and wind crush it on the ground.

Yet this peach fills my mouth with juicy sun.

This is the blessing for the first garden tomato:

Those green boxes of tasteless acid the store

sells in January, those red things with the savor

of wet chalk, they mock your fragrant name.

How fat and sweet you are weighing down my palm,

warm as the flank of a cow in the sun.

You are the savor of summer in a thin red skin.

This is the blessing for a political victory:

Although I shall not forget that things

work in increments and epicycles and sometime

leaps that half the time fall back down,

let's not relinquish dancing while the music

fits into our hips and bounces our heels.

We must never forget, pleasure is real as pain.

The blessing for the return of a favorite cat,

the blessing for love returned, for friends'

return, for money received unexpected,

the blessing for the rising of the bread,

the sun, the oppressed. I am not sentimental

about old men mumbling the Hebrew by rote

with no more feeling than one says gesundheit.

But the discipline of blessings is to taste

each moment, the bitter, the sour, the sweet

and the salty, and be glad for what does not

hurt. The art is in compressing attention

to each little and big blossom of the tree

of life, to let the tongue sing each fruit,

its savor, its aroma and its use.

Attention is love, what we must give

children, mothers, fathers, pets,

our friends, the news, the woes of others.

What we want to change we curse and then

pick up a tool. Bless whatever you can

with eyes and hands and tongue. If you

can't bless it, get ready to make it new.

The Elephant In The Room: A Love Story Between An Orthodox Woman and a Leftist Man

 By Menachem Froman

(Translated By Neil Fleischmann)

In the dark

both of us

feel around him

with cleaving but without hope

I hold onto his dragged tail

and believe it is rope

You

grasp his large, widespread ears

and surmise them to be wings

After giving up we both conclude

that what we have

never happened at all

And it's not just

a metaphor. He is right here.

Now he gets up

huge, upon us, awesome

May he not trample us

May he not knock us over

May what we have

not end badly

I

lift my hands in prayer

You

hold him with two hands

My G-d, My G-d - maybe

he'll carry both of us on his back.

A Poem For Yom Yerushalayim: Har HaBayit Veyadeinu

 By Menachem Froman

(Translated by Neil Fleischmann)

In childhood of old there's a story we told

of two brothers who rose in the night

and tarried to carry bundles to one another, using their hands.

They went in private, so as not to embarrass.

In the place where they met, in the place where they

interlocked hands in silence

the Holy Temple was built.

Two with clean hands will ascend the mountain

One from this and one from that

At night, so as not to embarrass

They will raise their hands

In faith

Until the battle stops

and the war breaks.

When G-d returns

the Return of Zion

we will be like children

How it will surely be as once

carrying their bundles.