Toward the end of the year--perhaps
this is always the case—I'm
 
looking for a sign.  The mountains, like a
massive wave, rush upon the land.
 
And striking from below the southwest flange,
sunlight flames the upper sky. Darkness
 
flows from the east at three in the afternoon.
This month, except for bombs and
 
hijacked planes, I'd be in Israel.
Is one place better than the next?
 
Like minor stars three snow-machines
approach downriver with swift, silent speed.
 
We've trotted to the slough and back.
Overdressed, in double-insulated mittens
 
and down pants, I watch you chew the snow,
wearing the comfortable hair of a dog.
 
Hot breath fogs my glasses, while you
nip a thorny branch whose brittle
 
bract enfolds the rose. In Sixteenth Century
Palestine, young Rabbis paced the graveyards
 
of the ancient Torah-tellers, smelt the tar-smell
of redemption burning in their templed hearts.
 
They knew, no less than Christians do,
this world must be remade. Is it
 
too late?  The other night, at twenty-eight below,
a green aurora branched across the sky.
 
I watched the sickle moon dip toward
the range. Orion bristled overhead,
 
jeweled sword, and golden belt of stars:
his state was all the wide and snowy west.
 
Now that the year is almost dead, have I
done what I set out to do? How have I changed?
 
At four, the evening star shines through,
the southwest rim is still in flames.
                        

The names in red hand-printed on beige walls 
precede their dates (as known) in blocked 
black ink, a tabernacle of the disappeared, 
our family name among the thousands here.
Transported to the camps, they turned to ash 
and blew away. 
                          Outside, ancestral 
gravestones scoured by age—a multitude 
of slabs that pitch at angles and collapse. 
Layered in dirt, the bones long since decayed,
hooded in moss, and Hebrew letters worn. 
We join a line of patience passing by
to view a past we all are moving toward. 
Does death erase the insults that they bore
whose lives are stitched in satin on the sky?