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Wednesday – Rosh Hashanah
As I was searching for a poem for Judaism’s celebration of its new year, which begins today, I came across a wonderful selection of appropriate lyrics assembled by one Rebekah Lowin. Lowin has not limited herself to Jewish poets as she shares lyrics capturing the freshness of leaving behind the past and beginning again.
The poem I’ve chosen I’ve shared once before on this occasion. In “i am running into a new year,” Lucille Clifton appears to be referring to her 46th birthday. A birthday, like a new year, is an opportunity to look back over one’s life and take stock. Thus, the poem is very much in the spirit of the High Holy Days, when sins of the past year are acknowledged and released.
Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, however, give observers a yearly opportunity to review the past twelve months whereas Clifton sounds like she’s had certain things on her mind for at least 30 years. These appear to involve excessive self-criticism and broken promises to herself.
Still, better late than never to move past such self-harm. Here’s the poem:
i am running into a new year
by Lucille Clifton
i am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that i catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what i said to myself
about myself
when i was sixteen and
twentysix and thirtysix
even thirtysix but
i am running into a new year
and i beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me
What is she loving and leaving? Perhaps some of the self-limiting myths she has lived with for decades, myths that are so bound up with her sense of herself that it feels like a betrayal to let them go. They catch in her hair “like strong fingers.”
The joy expressed in the poem gives us hope that Clifton really will break free this time. May observers this coming week experience that same exhilarating sense of renewal.
Past Posts about the High Holy Days
–Alicia Ostriker – Poems for Judaism’s High Holy Days
–Marge Piercy – The Light You Seek Hides in Your Belly
–Grace Schulman May God’s Love Be Taught at Last in Jerusalem
—Rachel Barenblat–Rosh Hashanah: How to Keep It New
—Enid Shomer–How Rosh Hashanah Is Like Swimming
—Marge Piercy–Let My Words Turn into Sparks
—Yehuda Amichai–Theoretically, a Season for Everything
—Emma Lazarus–High above the Flood and Fire Ye Held the Scroll
—Kadya Molodowsky–Blowing for Hope in the Face of Darkness
—Alicia Ostriker–Entering the Days of Awe
—Muriel Ruykeyser and Denise Levertov: Rosh Hashanah – A Stirring of Wonder
—Marge Piercy: Rosh Hashanah – Weave Real Connections
—Lucille Clifton: On 9-11 Firemen Ascended Jacob’s Ladder
—Rashani: Blowing for Hope in the Face of Darkness
—A Ninth Century Prayer for Yom Kippur
—Adrienne Rich’s Yom Kippur Thoughts about Conflict
—Jane Kenyon: Thirsting of Disordered Souls
—Rashani: Out of Darkness, Sanctified into Being
–Stanley Kunitz: Live in the Layers, Not on the Litter
—Philip Schultz: Believe in the Utter Sweetness of Your Life
