The Lost Steps

RUTH WHITMAN

THE LOST STEPS

Snow fell when my young grandfather arrived,

Behind him Moscow, Eden, Athens, Rome,

Bareheaded, eighteen, and a wandering Jew.

Snow covered up his footsteps leading home.

Defiant of history, he laughed his way

Through passover streets, under each arm a loat

Of leavened bread. A forgetting snow that day.

*

The first snow was the laying on of hands,

Blessing and naming, while Eve looked up to see

The white erasure hide her Adam's land.

How she had come, how gone, when Jahweh smiled

Blew drifting in her brain. She turned again

Back to her dishes and her hungry child.

And those old men rocking round their ark,

Beautiful in their beards, prayed all that fell,

Manna or snow, be Jahweh's favoring mark.

And Leda knew, when feathers fell like snow,

The thunderous wings of God in bright sunrise,

And threw her arms around his swansdown neck

And wrapped him in a passionate surprise.

But in God's ravishing, Mary had wrung

Her hands beneath the bird who brought the sky

To cover her lament. Not knowing why,

Except she thought she saw her baby hung,

Shrunken, from the rafters of the world.

*

Was that my garden where I sang innocence?

Was that my cross that nailed the patient Jew?

Were those my thunderous wings? Was that my swan?

I cannot bend my knee.

All, all is gone.

I live on the charity of history.

Part ark, part swan, part cross over her hair,

My daughter stands before a holy fount.

Snow falls before my eyes. I cannot see.

I cannot bend my knee. I would not dare.