Closing the Gate
Two poems on atonement
This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.
AVINU MALKEINU
(almighty and merciful)
When I sat in synagogue,
I did not look at the rabbi.
I watched the trees.
Avinu Malkeinu.
Our father our king.
I couldn’t get my eyes off the trees
in their nakedness and green.
Their green moving into yellow
moving into red and death,
their dying leaves and the restoration of the spirit.
What does that mean? To restore a spirit?
It means that humility is a disappearance into a nakedness no one has ever seen.
Avinu Malkeinu.
I sat in synagogue and couldn’t keep my eyes off the trees.
I wanted to fall into them barefoot and pregnant with the world and the rabbi vanished.
I wanted to take off my Rosh Hashanah synagogue clothes
and walk into the trees to be my rabbi,
to be my Torah,
to be my casting off of all the sins.
We have sinned, brother.
We hide in corners and eat sugar.
We look away from the homeless people and unlock our car doors.
We steal from the bakery.
We blow up oil fields in the name of God
and say bad things about people behind their backs.
Avinu Malkeinu.
I wanted to walk naked into the trees
out of the sanctuary
into the sanctuary of autumn trees
and fall to the ground,
my flesh torn and soft,
my muscles like birds
whistling out of my body—
little missiles crashing through the air in song.
LED ZEPPELIN IS KING OF THE JEWS ON KOL NIDRE
What if Led Zeppelin played Kol Nidre tonight?
In all the synagogues across the world?
They could do it in the spirit of Goin’ To California
or they could do it like Ramble On.
Just a bunch of old rockers taking us into atonement.
John Paul Jones on mandolin.
Robert humming in his big balled blue jeans.
Jimmy with a lute and Bonham, from the dead,
scratching brushes across the snare hide.
It’d be some kind of mystical, magical hallucination of sorrow.
I bet it would bring the world together
even if you hate the Jews
but found yourself walking by Temple Beth Zion on Beacon
or floating towards El Transito Synagogue in the town of Toledo
where auto-da-fé was all the rage back in the day.
The music turning you inside out into forgiveness.
The sky some abundant space of flight to miss.
The way you start to think of Neilah and not because the fast is over
the bagels are on the way
but because you’ve been through something,
you’ve gone inside the hunger to obliterate desire.
And with no more desire
there is just the body and then the body disappears
and the words follow and there is only, what’s left, the shofar—
Robert Plant, his mouth on the ram’s horn,
with his big lungs,
closing the gate.
Matthew Lippman is the author of six poetry collections. His latest collection, We Are
All Sleeping With Our Sneakers On (2024), is published by Four Way Books. His
previous collection Mesmerizingly Sadly Beautiful (2020) is published by Four Way
Books. It was the recipient of the 2018 Levis Prize. In 2027 his next collection, Cry
Baby Cry, will be published by Four Way Books.
Instagram: @matthew_lippman_poet
This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.
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Avenu Malkenu is my deepest prayer and to find it as a refrain in your original poem is heartening. And what could be better than Zeppelin for the High Holidays?