more elegantly
than I have known it
strolling, only
slower,
the Jewish
families
walking,
barely,
together
at the exact pace
where toddlers
and the very old
synch
to throw bread
laced with sins
into the Hudson or
any river really
inspired
and sick
with my own
mutilations of it,
time,
I fell into
cinema,
the movies,
bought
popcorn
and watched
the story of a tightrope
walker
Man on Wire
and, yes,
wept, I wept
for fullness, finally, again. I have been wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
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4 comments:
This from
"The Collected Poems
of September 30th"
You have been wrong exactly four times, but I don't know when.
Time doesn't exist without bodies to make it visible.
Tact. Charity. Pathos.
Method. Principle. Spirit.
I don't want to get into too much subtext here, but this poem is basically a response to a conversation I had about the Jewish families I saw walking all over NYC on Rosh H. Apparently, they throw bread into bodies of water in order to cleanse themselves of their sins. Although this might take away some of the mystery of the poem, I wanted to tell you because it's a ceremony worth knowing about (that you might already know about).
Ah, here it is, from the good Wiki:
"During the afternoon of the first day the practice of tashlikh is observed, in which prayers are recited near natural flowing water, and one's sins are symbolically cast into the water. Many also have the custom to throw bread or pebbles into the water, to symbolize the "casting off" of sins."
You had to see this. The best religion I have seen in a while. Then again, I've got my William James eyes in lately . . . .
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