Where I grew up, I used to see
the rabbi, dour and pale
in religion’s mourner clothes,
walking to the synagogue.
Once there, did he put on
sackcloth and ashes? Wail?
He would not let me in to see
the gold menorah burning.
Mazuzah, Pesach, Chanukah—
these were timbred words I learned,
were things I knew by glimpses.
And I learned schwartze too
And schnapps, which schwartzes bought
on credit from “Jew Baby.”
Tippling ironists laughed and said
he’d soon be rich as Rothschild
From their swinish Saturdays.
Hirschel and Molly and I meanwhile
divvied halveh, polly seeds,
were spies and owls and Fu Manchu.
But the synagogue became
New Calvary.
The rabbi bore my friends off
in his prayer shawl.