Forsythia spills over fences
in Connecticut:
the rest remains bare.
Survivors light candles, sulphur
from the match curling
around their heads.
A cantor sings Kaddish as much for the living
as the dead.
We have put on our good clothes.
We have driven through the pleasant country
to take our seats on a stage.
I listen to the audience: am I someone
singing to himself
to make silence less?
Or rouse a voice where there is none,
and, nothing myself, resurrect
the living from the dead.
(originally published in Notre Dame Review and included in my collection, Evidence of Things Seen)
Richard Wollman 