Adrienne Drobnies is a poet and scientist/project manager at the Genome Sciences Center in Vancouver Canada. Her poetry has appeared at Canadian literary magazines including Scrivener, NeWest Review, Waves, Poetry Canada Review, and Poetry Toronto and in the anthologies New Voices (Mosaic Press) and From Sinai to the Shtetl and Beyond: Where is Home for the Jewish Writer? (Hamilton Jewish Literacy Festival, 2009). Adrienne has written a suite of poems, Randonneés, that was short-listed for the Canadian Broadcasting Company literary award for poetry.
Day of Atonement
By Adrienne Drobnies
I search for Kol Nidre
among the few words I know
in this language
Baruch atah adonai
What do I know
about you
grandfather
married once
one child
again
two children
made hats
went broke
threw bombs in theaters
Your image
is passed down to me
along with
the punched cards
shuttled through the looms
of your last years
None of this tells me
how you walked out of Poland
eighty years ago
or why your son wakes
thirty years
after your death
still seeking acceptance
in dreams of explanation
and a life of atonement
Author’s note: Baruch atah adonai means Blessed art thou, O Lord and opens most Hebrew prayers. The Kol Nidre is the special recitation for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and opens with the Aramaic words Kol Nidre, which means all vows.
Insightful work…there are so many meanings to the word “atonement” in a christian sense it means ” At ONE ment” faith leading us back to the source (ONE)
Insightful work…there are so many meanings to the word “atonement” in a christian sense it means ” At ONE ment” faith leading us back to the source (ONE)
An outstanding poem!
Yes, great poem indeed.