As full of Christianity
as the sea of salt,
the English tongue
my mother and father spoke,
so rich in Germanic tree and God worship
and old Romantic Catholic nouns,
does not quite work for me
at family burials or other,
as we say in English,
sacramental moments.

Although I know the Pater Noster
and Stabat Mater as popular songs,
I am surprised, when close friends
speak Hebrew, that I understand nothing.
Something in me expects to understand them
without the least effort,
as a bird knows song.
There is a language of prayers unsaid
I cannot speak.
A man can count himself lucky these days to be alive,
an instrument of ten strings,
or to be gently carried off by sleep and death.

What of belief? Like the tides
there is and is not a temple of words
on which work continues.
Unsynagogued, unschooled, but lettered,
I drag a block of uncut marble—
I have seen prayers pushed
into the crevices of the West Wall,
books stacked against the boulders,
ordinary men standing beside prophets and scoundrels.
I know the great stoneworkers can show the wind in marble,
ecstasy, blood, a button left undone.