The Coming of Light

(Hanukkah Brass Menorah, circa 1962, by Ludwig
Wolpert, 1900-1981, German-born sculptor and
designer who worked and taught in Israel and
America)

Hanukkah celebrates the victory, in 165 BCE, of the Jews under the leadership of Judas Maccabeus in Judea over their Syrian rules, who had banned all parts of Jewish culture. The feast celebrates “the joyous day / when we regained the right to pray / to our one God in our own way,” in the words of American poet Aileen Fisher (1906-2002).

The eight-day Festival of Light began on the evening of December 20 this year. The daily lighting of the candles commemorates the miraculous expansion of one day’s oil to an eight-day supply of light, enough to allow the Jews the time needed to rededicate their Temple.

THE COMING OF LIGHT

Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine
and tomorrow’s dust flares into breath.

~ Mark Strand, born 1934, Canadian-born American poet and translator

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A Piece of the Storm

(Mark Strand, poet laureate, 1990-1991)

A PIECE OF THE STORM

From the shadow of domes in the city of domes,
A snowflake, a blizzard of one, weightless, entered your room
And made its way to the arm of the chair where you, looking up
From your book, saw it the moment it landed. That’s all
There was to it. No more than a solemn waking
To brevity, to the lifting and falling away of attention, swiftly,
A time between times, a flowerless funeral. No more than that
Except for the feeling that this piece of the storm,
Which turned into nothing before your eyes, would come back,
That someone years hence, sitting as you are now, might say:
“It’s time. The air is ready. The sky has an opening.”

~ Mark Strand, born 1934, Canadian-born American poet and translator

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Lines for Winter

(Bear Tracks, woodcut by Mary Okheena, born 1957,
Canadian Inuit artist)

Inuit is now the preferred name for the indigenous peoples of northern Canada and of Greenland. It replaces the older name of Eskimo, which is still favored in Alaska.

LINES FOR WINTER

Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself —
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon’s gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.

~ Mark Strand, born 1934, American poet and translator

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