“Thou wilt cast all our sins into the depths of the sea”*
We needed a running stream but we had our sins
We carried our sins but we needed bread We found
bread We carried bread in small stale lumps
to the river the river running as it ought
with water slapped in the face again and again by wind
Glister from high rises began to wink
like foil in the crinkled waves The pier
carved into the current What brilliant sins
shook in the punished waves Do high rise sins
shine brighter What were your sins You wouldn’t
tell nor would I ask The piles from ruined piers
poked at the not-quite-indigo dusk while cars
thrummed along the elevated West Side monotone
and planes whined higher carrying higher sins
and how was it how did it come to be that I
crushed someone’s heart It wasn’t like tossing bread
in a stream Then how could it be absolved
by casting bread That heart wasn’t stale It wasn’t
a lump No More like a wounded pigeon As if
I’d stamped on its chest with my heel as it flailed and now
the chorus of excuses rises in plainsong You
toss your bread The railing is cold at my chest
Your bread shivers and bobs in the waves
I clutch my bread And what do they mean by sin
I clutch my question Night is hustling down
over New Jersey over the restless flow
the contradiction between a river’s thrust
to the sea and the tide’s upstream beseeching roughed
by wind He gathers the waters of the sea as a heap
He lays up the deeps in storehouses so I raise
my hand in the dark I unclench my fingers I let
one more sorrow one more question fall
into the sudden the sodden and anonymous night
*Tashlich: the Jewish ceremony of casting away the year’s sins symbolically by throwing bread upon running water. It is performed during Rosh Ha’shanah, the Jewish New Year.