De Amerikaanse dichter Charles Reznikoff werd op 30 augustus 1894 in New York geboren. Zie ook mijn blog van 30 augustus 2009 en ook mijn blog van 30 augustus 2010.
Meditations on the Fall and Winter Holidays
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.
Charles Reznikoff (30 augustus 1894 – 22 januari 1976)