Poem 9 - "After All"


After All
Avigayil Rosensweig

I’m sure every family has one
Some precious heirloom
Passed hand to hand
With cautious fingers
And a hissed warning—careful!
Some priceless legacy
Burnt with the bread before Passover
Crumbled to ash in a Lag Ba’omer bonfire
Humans are such careless beings, after all

Comments

  1. Gabriella Englander April 11, 2018 at 8:59 PM

    This is a clever, witty poem that explores the possible and (highly probable!) scenario in which a Jewish family might burn an unintended object in one of the ritual fires. There is a humorous tone in the poem which contrasts nicely with the sacred and precious concepts of family heirlooms and religious holidays.
    The words are tight, effective, meaningful. Well done.
    I can hear the hiss in my head - Careful! Very effective.
    Nice , subtle, well-crafted alliteration (b's) and consonance (t's)- "burnt with the bread before"
    l's and b's in "crumbled to ash in a Lag Ba'omer bonfire." - should the "o" in Lag Ba'omer be capitalized?
    What I'm wondering is, "Oh no! What did the Rosensweig family accidentally burn in the fire this time???" :)
    I also noticed how the subject widens from "I" to "families" to all "human beings." Very logical progression.
    Cheers.

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  2. Yael MayerMay 6, 2018 at 6:42 PM

    Ahhh, the savory irony! I love the sudden switch where the poem goes from preservation to destruction- or from preservation to a different kind of preservation. The preservation of things making way for the preservation of traditions, traditions which are themselves destructive. I could probably write an entire essay on the parallelism and contrasts in this tiny poem- and I bet you could write a book. Suffice to say that I can see what you're starting to set up here, and it poses questions- big questions- about the nature of things, what they mean to us, about traditions, about permanence, about loss....So, so much to dig into here. Applause.

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