On Having a Jewish Father

I remember the matzoh hunt
on roller skates with my cousins shrieking
while our parents sat
in a warm circle, sipped at
their Manischewitz, and talked
ancient history (the expulsion from Egypt,
Aunt Marion’s surgery).

I wanted a sandwich
before we left, driving back
into the rest of the world,
but couldn’t have it on bread
(destroyed, all, the week before—
grinding the leavening into the dirt
that holds the bodies
of our fathers—
burning blood) so
I cried and my father’s
nose pressed my head.
I studied death camps
while my history moaned in my ear.

A Jew-boy played his violin;
a shaking cantor raised his voice
to sing prayers steady as mountains,
and centuries dripped from his tongue in
the voice of a god that I am
too deaf to know, too young to
believe in.
My ears are blocked by a
barrier of blood, stone-solid and
as enduring as the
seven lights wavering in every window.