A year of mourning has a rhythm, supposedly
A bass line laid down by Sages
To help the heart re-pace itself
So the heart can help the body
Metabolize absence
Let go the face, the name,
The vocal signature
Let them travel the neuron network pathways
For 7 days, for 30; 11 months, a year
Find their way to the assembly point
At the node of peaceful memory
That’s the rhythm, more or less
So the body can metabolize its absences
So the soul
Which loves to climb the Babel Tower every day
Stalking truth and peace to the heavens
Can crumple
Can fold up neatly like a fan
For a time
And still remain a soul
7 days and 30, 11 months, a year
From: There are no words, ein milim
To words that are approximate and fumbly, but mostly they will do
To when it’s finally fine to sort of say: How are you
To someone who could answer on some days
Or not yet quite.
That’s the rhythm we require.
So how do we uncrumple
When the soul so capacious is not so much folded
Crumpled
As: scrunched
Like the draft of a Shana Tova card, too sappy or superficial, tossed in the can
How when yahrzeit and shiva are scrambled
When after Shmay Rabbah, the critics overpower
The comforters’ Amen
When you’re mourning and still searching for survivors
When you can’t tell about the New Year challah if it’s raisins in there, or if it’s stones
The heart was not meant to beat this fast
To meet our distant cousins at all once
To learn the names of all those new places and all the new vocabulary, the nuance
of ne’edarim shvuyim and chatufim
Or in the age of the first flowering of redemption, to repurpose a prayer
for captives in the hands of medieval bandits
It is difficult for the heart, kasheh m’od la-lev
For the heart – for the body --
To mourn so many people and so many dreams
All at the same time
One heart can’t do this by itself
It takes our many hearts.
Our souls are rolled up like the priestly blessing
Inscribed 2500 years ago and hidden
In a crypt on the hill ignoring the Valley of Gehenna below
Staring rather toward Zion
Waiting for the bored youth who will discover it on a field trip
And bring it to the place where the delicate foil
Can be unfurled
Will be restored
Will call out once again:
And grant, you, peace.
V’yasem l’cha shalom.
*****
Some of the references:
yahrzeit -- Yiddish word for the anniversary of someone's death
shiva -- Hebrew for seven, the traditional mourning period after a funeral
shmay rabba -- "God's great name", a phrase in Kaddish, the prayer said by mourners
Shana Tova -- "A Good New Year", a greeting for Rosh Hashanah
The new vocabulary mentions words used for people who are captive or missing
The last part refers to the actual discovery of a scroll/amulet containing words similar to the Torah's priestly blessing of peace
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