Weight advantage: Santa. Sugar and milk
at every stop, the stout man shimmies
down one more chimney, sack of desire
chuting behind, while Elijah, skinny
and empty-handed, slips in invisible as
a once favored, since disgraced uncle,
through the propped open side door.
Inside, I’ve been awaiting a miracle
since 1962, my 9 year-old self slouching
on this slip-covered sofa, Manischewitz
stashed beneath the cushion. Where
are the fire-tinged horses, the chariots
to transport me? Where is the whirlwind
and brimstone? Instead, our dull-bladed
sleigh rusts in the storage bin beneath
the building’s soot-covered flight   
of cellar stairs. Come back to me father,
during December’s perfect snowfall
and pull me once more up Schenck
and down Pitkin, where the line wraps
around Church Hall. Show me, again,
the snapshot of the skull-capped boy
on Santa’s lap. Let me laugh this time
and levitate like a magician’s assistant,
awed by my own weightlessness. Give me
the imagination to climb the fire escape
and look up toward the Godless Heavens
and to marvel at the ordinary sky.

Kindle the taper like the steadfast star
Ablaze on evening's forehead o'er the earth,
And add each night a lustre till afar
An eightfold splendor shine above thy hearth.
Clash, Israel, the cymbals, touch the lyre,
Blow the brass trumpet and the harsh-tongued horn;
Chant psalms of victory till the heart takes fire,
The Maccabean spirit leap new-born.

Remember how from wintry dawn till night,
Such songs were sung in Zion, when again
On the high altar flamed the sacred light,
And, purified from every Syrian stain,
The foam-white walls with golden shields were hung,
With crowns and silken spoils, and at the shrine,
Stood, midst their conqueror-tribe, five chieftains sprung
From one heroic stock, one seed divine.

Five branches grown from Mattathias' stem,
The Blessed John, the Keen-Eyed Jonathan,
Simon the fair, the Burst-of Spring, the Gem,
Eleazar, Help of-God; o'er all his clan
Judas the Lion-Prince, the Avenging Rod,
Towered in warrior-beauty, uncrowned king,
Armed with the breastplate and the sword of God,
Whose praise is: "He received the perishing."

They who had camped within the mountain-pass,
Couched on the rock, and tented neath the sky,
Who saw from Mizpah's heights the tangled grass
Choke the wide Temple-courts, the altar lie
Disfigured and polluted--who had flung
Their faces on the stones, and mourned aloud
And rent their garments, wailing with one tongue,
Crushed as a wind-swept bed of reeds is bowed,

Even they by one voice fired, one heart of flame,
Though broken reeds, had risen, and were men,
They rushed upon the spoiler and o'ercame,
Each arm for freedom had the strength of ten.
Now is their mourning into dancing turned,
Their sackcloth doffed for garments of delight,
Week-long the festive torches shall be burned,
Music and revelry wed day with night.

Still ours the dance, the feast, the glorious Psalm,
The mystic lights of emblem, and the Word.
Where is our Judas?  Where our five-branched palm?
Where are the lion-warriors of the Lord?
Clash, Israel, the cymbals, touch the lyre,
Sound the brass trumpet and the harsh-tongued horn,
Chant hymns of victory till the heart take fire,
The Maccabean spirit leap new-born!

Lord, the true that follow thee
     Beam in vict’ry’s radiant light,
Fill’d their hearts with joyous glee,
     Even in the darkest night.

Roaring billows wild and fleet,
     Onward pressed the enemy’s band;
Israel’s remnant Jacob’s seat,
     How wilt thou their might withstand?

Rise ye heroes, rise to fight
     For your standard, truth divine,
Not by numbers nor by might,
     By his spirit ye shall shine.

And inspired by such appeal
     Ev’ry man to hosts increased;
And they fought with holy zeal
     Till the tyrant-hold released.

Lord, thy truth, thy holy love,
     Is our cherish’d banner still;
And in faith for evermore,
     Thy command we follow will.

III
Hanukkah

In a world where each man must be of use
and each thing useful, the rebellious Jews
light not one light but eight—
not to see by but to look at.

Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light. 
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves, 
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows, 
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine 
and tomorrow’s dust flares into breath.

The Rabbi tells his old, old tale,
     The pupils seated round.
“…And thus, my boys, no holy oil
     In the Temple could be found.

The heathens left no oil to light
     The Lord’s eternal lamp;
At last one jar, one single jar,
     Was found with the high priest’s stamp.

Its oil could only last one day—
     But God hath wondrous ways;
For lo! a miracle occurred:
     It burned for eight whole days.”

The tale was ended, but the boys,
     All open-eyed and dumb,
Sat listening still, as though aware
     Of stranger things to come.

Just wait, my boys, permit me, pray,
     The liberty to take;
Your Rabbi—may he pardon me—
     Has made a slight mistake.

Not eight days, but two thousand years
     That jar of oil did last,
To quell its wondrous flames availed
     No storm, no flood, no blast.

But this is not yet all, my boys:
     The miracle just starts.
This flame is kindling light and hope
     In countless gloomy hearts.

And in our long and starless night,
     Lest we should go astray,
It beacon-like sheds floods of light,
     And eastwards points the way,

Where light will shine on Zion’s hill,
     As in the days of old.
The miracle is greater, boys,
     Than what your Rabbi told.

O, the legendary light,
Gleaming goldenly in night
     Like the stars above,
Beautiful, like lights in dream,
Eight, the taper-flames that stream
     All one glory and one love.

In our Temple, magical—
Memories, now tragical—
Holy hero-hearts aflame
With a glory more than fame;
There where a shrine is every sod,
     Every grave, God’s golden ore,
With a paean whose rhyme to God,
     Lit these lamps of yore.

Lights, you are a living dream,
Faith and bravery you beam,
     Youth and dawn and May.
Would your beam were more than dream,
Would the light and love you stream,
     Stirred us, spurred us, aye!

Fabled memories of flame,
Till the beast in man we tame,
Tyrants bow to truth, amain,
Brands and bullets yield to brain,
Guns to God, and shells to soul,
Hounds to heart resign the role,
Pillared lights of liberty,
In your fairy flames, we’ll see
Faith’s and freedom’s Phoenix-might,
The Omnipotence of Right.

Wake, Israel, wake! Recall to-day
     The glorious Maccabean rage,
The sire heroic, hoary-gray,
     His five-fold lion-lineage:
The Wise, the Elect, the Help-of-God,
     The Burst-of-Spring, the Avenging Rod.

From Mizpeh’s mountain-ridge they saw
     Jerusalem’s empty streets, her shrine
Laid waste where Greeks profaned the Law
     With idol and with pagan sign.
Mourners in tattered black were there,
     With ashes sprinkled on their hair.

Then from the stony peak there rang
     A blast to ope the graves; down poured
The Maccabean clan, who sang
     Their battle-anthem to the Lord.
Five heroes lead, and following, see,
     Ten thousand rush to victory!

Oh for Jerusalem’s trumpet now,
     To blow a blast of shattering power,
To wake the sleepers high and low,
     And rouse them to the urgent hour!
No hand for vengeance—but to save,
     A million naked swords should wave.

Oh deem not dead that martial fire,
     Say not the mystic flame is spent!
With Moses’ law and David’s lyre,
     Your ancient strength remains unbent.
Let but an Ezra rise anew
     To lift the Banner of the Jew!

A rag, a mock at first—erelong,
     When men have bled and women wept
To guard its precious folds from wrong,
     Even they who shrunk, even they who slept,
Shall leap to bless it, and to save.
     Strike! for the brave revere the brave!

Blessed art thou, O God our Lord,
Who made us holy with his word,
And told us on this feast of light
To light one candle more each night.

(Because when foes about us pressed
     To crush us all with death or shame,
The Lord his priests with courage blest
To strike and give his people rest
And in the House that he loved best
     Relight our everlasting flame.)

Blest art Thou, the whole world’s King,
Who did so wonderful a thing
For our own fathers true and bold
At this same time in days of old!

I
New Year's

The solid houses in the mist 
are thin as tissue paper; 
the water laps slowly at the rocks; 
and the ducks from the north are here 
at rest on the grey ripples. 

The company in which we went 
so free of care, so carelessly, 
has scattered. Good-bye, 
to you who lie behind in graves, 
to you who galloped proudly off! 
Pockets and heart are empty. 

This is the autumn and our harvest—
such as it is, such as it is—
the beginnings of the end, bare trees and barren ground; 
but for us only the beginning: 
let the wild goat's horn and the silver trumpet sound!

Reason upon reason 
to be thankful: 
for the fruit of the earth, 
for the fruit of the tree, 
for the light of the fire, 
and to have come to this season. 

The work of our hearts is dust 
to be blown about in the winds 
by the God of our dead in the dust 
but our Lord delighting in life 
(let the wild goat's horn 
and the silver trumpet sound!)
our God Who imprisons in coffin and grave 
and unbinds the bound. 

You have loved us greatly and given us 
Your laws 
for an inheritance, 
Your sabbaths, holidays, and seasons of gladness, 
distinguishing Israel 
from other nations—
distinguishing us 
above the shoals of men. 
And yet why should we be remembered—
if at all—only for peace, if grief 
is also for all? Our hopes, 
if they blossom, if they blossom at all, the petals 
and fruit fall. 

You have given us the strength 
to serve You, 
but we may serve or not 
as we please; 
not for peace nor for prosperity, 
not even for length of life, have we merited 
remembrance; remember us 
as the servants 
You have inherited. 


II
Day of Atonement 

The great Giver has ended His disposing; 
the long day 
is over and the gates are closing. 
How badly all that has been read 
was read by us, 
how poorly all that should be said. 

All wickedness shall go in smoke. 
It must, it must! 
The just shall see and be glad. 
The sentence is sweet and sustaining; 
for we, I suppose, are the just; 
and we, the remaining. 

If only I could write with four pens between five fingers 
and with each pen a different sentence at the same time—
but the rabbis say it is a lost art, a lost art. 
I well believe it. And at that of the first twenty sins that we confess, 
five are by speech alone; 
little wonder that I must ask the Lord to bless 
the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart. 

Now, as from the dead, I revisit the earth and delight 
in the sky, and hear again 
the noise of the city and see 
earth's marvelous creatures—men. 
Out of nothing I became a being, 
and from a being I shall be 
nothing—but until then 
I rejoice, a mote in Your world, 
a spark in Your seeing. 


III 
Feast of Booths

This was a season of our fathers' joy: 
not only when they gathered grapes and the fruit of trees 
in Israel, but when, locked in the dark and stony streets, 
they held—symbols of a life from which they were banished 
but to which they would surely return—
the branches of palm trees and of willows, the twigs of the myrtle, 
and the bright odorous citrons. 

This was the grove of palms with its deep well 
in the stony ghetto in the blaze of noon; 
this the living stream lined with willows; 
and this the thick-leaved myrtles and trees heavy with fruit 
in the barren ghetto—a garden 
where the unjustly hated were justly safe at last. 

In booths this week of holiday 
as those who gathered grapes in Israel lived 
and also to remember we were cared for 
in the wilderness—
I remember how frail my present dwelling is
 even if of stones and steel. 

I know this is the season of our joy: 
we have completed the readings of the Law 
and we begin again; 
but I remember how slowly I have learnt, how little, 
how fast the year went by, the years—how few. 


IV
Hanukkah

The swollen dead fish float on the water;
the dead birds lie in the dust trampled to feathers;
the lights have been out a long time and the quick gentle hands that lit them—
rosy in the yellow tapers' glow—
have long ago become merely nails and little bones,
and of the mouths that said the blessing and the minds that thought it
only teeth are left and skulls, shards of skulls.
By all means, then, let us have psalms
and days of dedication anew to the old causes.

Penniless, penniless, I have come with less and still less
to this place of my need and the lack of this hour.
That was a comforting word the prophet spoke:
Not by might nor by power but by My spirit, said the Lord;
comforting, indeed, for those who have neither might nor power—
for a blade of grass, for a reed.

The miracle, of course, was not that the oil for the sacred light—
in a little cruse—lasted as long as they say;
but that the courage of the Maccabees lasted to this day:
let that nourish my flickering spirit.

Go swiftly in your chariot, my fellow Jew,
you who are blessed with horses;
and I will follow as best I can afoot,
bringing with me perhaps a word or two.
Speak your learned and witty discourses
and I will utter my word or two—
not by might not by power
but by Your Spirit, Lord.