Remembering,
And forgetting.
Forgetting what we should
Remember;
Remembering what we should
Forget.
As with music’s rawest tensions,
Compassion leads by its push
To elevations far beyond
A sojourn amongst
Memory’s imperfections.
The Sefat Emet instructs
On yet another human task
Of repair:
The labor of gathering
Truth’s thousand splinters
Following God’s act
Of throwing Her down
To adom.
The truth-telling of Family
Can be a complicated business.
While pressing himself
Into a trauma-chiseled cheek,
Yehuda humbly whispered
Perhaps all Yosef needed to recall.
“Father.”
Image: Joseph Recognized by His Brothers (1863 painting by Léon Pierre Urbain Bourgeois, public domain).
