by Lydia Kukoff
Sacred texts come in many forms — Bible, Talmud, midrash and, for me, poetry, which has always been a source of insight and delight. The poem, "How Divine is Forgiving?" by Marge Piercy, is a favorite of mine. I read these same words every year at this season and each year they seem to change because I have changed.
Our task during this season is to do the work of soul-examining, with the goal of teshuvah, returning. This poem, in its raw honesty, speaks of some of the many dimensions and complexities of forgiveness.
In the spirit of the poem and of the season, may we all find the strength to forgive and be forgiven.
And may it be a sweet year.
How Divine is Forgiving?
by Marge Piercy
It's a nice concept
but what's under the sculptured draperies?
We forgive when we don't really care
because what was done to us brought unexpected
harvest, as I always try to explain
to the peach trees as I prune them hard,
to the cats when I shove pills against
the Gothic vaults of their mouths.
We forgive those who betrayed us
years later because memory has rotted
through like something left out in the weather
bettered clean then littered dirty
in the rain, chewed by mice and beetles,
frozen and baked and stripped by the wind
till it is unrecognizable, corpse
or broken machine, something long useless.
We forgive those whom their own machinations
have sufficiently tangled, enshrouded,
the fly who bit us to draw blood and who hangs now a gutted trophy in a spider's
airy larder; more exactly, the friend
whose habit of lying has immobilized him
at last like a dog trapped in a cocoon
of fishing line and barbed hooks.
We forgive those we firmly love
because anger hurts, a coal that burns
and smoulders still scorching the tissues
inside, blistering wherever it touches
so that finally it is to ease our own pain
that we bury the hot clinkers in a mound
of caring, suffocate the sparks with promises,
drown them in tears, reconciling.
We forgive mostly not from strength
but through imperfections, for memory
wears transparent as a glass with the pattern
washed off, till we stare past what injured us.
We forgive because we too have done
the same to others easy as a mudslide;
or because anger is a fire that must be fed
and we are too tired to rise and haul a log.
From "Available Light" (Knopf, 1988)
Sacred texts come in many forms — Bible, Talmud, midrash and, for me, poetry, which has always been a source of insight and delight. The poem, "How Divine is Forgiving?" by Marge Piercy, is a favorite of mine. I read these same words every year at this season and each year they seem to change because I have changed.
Our task during this season is to do the work of soul-examining, with the goal of teshuvah, returning. This poem, in its raw honesty, speaks of some of the many dimensions and complexities of forgiveness.
In the spirit of the poem and of the season, may we all find the strength to forgive and be forgiven.
And may it be a sweet year.
How Divine is Forgiving?
by Marge Piercy
It's a nice concept
but what's under the sculptured draperies?
We forgive when we don't really care
because what was done to us brought unexpected
harvest, as I always try to explain
to the peach trees as I prune them hard,
to the cats when I shove pills against
the Gothic vaults of their mouths.
We forgive those who betrayed us
years later because memory has rotted
through like something left out in the weather
bettered clean then littered dirty
in the rain, chewed by mice and beetles,
frozen and baked and stripped by the wind
till it is unrecognizable, corpse
or broken machine, something long useless.
We forgive those whom their own machinations
have sufficiently tangled, enshrouded,
the fly who bit us to draw blood and who hangs now a gutted trophy in a spider's
airy larder; more exactly, the friend
whose habit of lying has immobilized him
at last like a dog trapped in a cocoon
of fishing line and barbed hooks.
We forgive those we firmly love
because anger hurts, a coal that burns
and smoulders still scorching the tissues
inside, blistering wherever it touches
so that finally it is to ease our own pain
that we bury the hot clinkers in a mound
of caring, suffocate the sparks with promises,
drown them in tears, reconciling.
We forgive mostly not from strength
but through imperfections, for memory
wears transparent as a glass with the pattern
washed off, till we stare past what injured us.
We forgive because we too have done
the same to others easy as a mudslide;
or because anger is a fire that must be fed
and we are too tired to rise and haul a log.
From "Available Light" (Knopf, 1988)
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