TWENTY-SIX
GOLDBARTH, ALBERT
TWENTY-SIX ALBERT GOLDBARTH This was the prayershawl: two huge, golden tassels of sun draped over my shoulders. I walked a hill, after rain, from the breaking of clouds as from the splitting of...
...Mitzvah: luck...
...This was the text of the sermon, called The Lost Tribe...
...A fish leapt out of the waters becomes a dead fish or a man...
...Albert Goldbarth is the author of Comings Back, a collection of poems to be published this month by Doubleday...
...And now, having tried to be that man, with the litany of crystals of salt, with the psalm of crystals of sugar, at the doubling of my years, this was my more naked rite of passage...
...And at each multiple of thirteen, let me say it...
...Not that I said more, but that I said it more lucid, or thought so, and sang a long, low note to the carrying further of air we call Sky, and asked not for acceptance in the sanctum of my heritage, but for the understanding to breathe air where it thinned at the borders of settlement...
...Once, at thirteen, I came unto my manhood under wool and silver...
...If a pointing of light in the stilled world showed a leaf to be bipinnate, wasn't this an open siddurl This was the yarmulke: black hair weighted with water, which, no less than silk, indicated Presence...
...I walked a hill, after rain, from the breaking of clouds as from the splitting of fresh loaves ending a fast, a ritual expectation streamed...
Vol. 2 • September 1981 • No. 4
