95. Is there a custom that when the child is born one should whisper the biblical verse Hear O Israel into his ear? 

--The Jewish Ethnographic Program, 1912

1.

As in other galaxies some colors must 
be hidden from the range of creatures’ vision 
and, transported to this world, go mad 
with reflection – fireworks of ochre, fuchsia, gold—

so your voice was smothered in the black 
depths, the knotted ends of sound, where waves, 
shoreless, disappear themselves, until
this first time it poured forth into 

whatever might cradle or repel it, 
might drink it down or harden it to glass. 
It tested every surface: tiled floor 
spotted with my blood, the ailing air 

beyond the birthing room, the skin 
of my chest charged now with listening. 

2.

On the tree of our names, we tell you, 

leaves are few and yellow. 

Next door a child composes his nightly 

concerto of abandonment. 

Before dawn, I pour the kettle

over pothos roots. The soil 

refuses, repels water 

onto the white sill. 

Even so, the vine goes on 

repeating itself, a din 

of opening. On it, you practice 

your grasp, which has 

no opposite yet. 

Every few days, a petiole 

concedes its leaf 

without argument. 

3.

After you go back to sleep 
I cannot. Rocking you, 
I’ve passed you the papers 

required for crossing 
some border inside me, 
a wall I have built

inside you, too, 
organelle that sifts 
and separates. This document 

is an ancient song, one 
whose words I’ve made up to replace 
ones I’ve never known. 

When I picture 
the God it means 
I imagine an ocean, 

its sighing its only container. 
Green body rocking 
itself to oblivion. Bind them 

as a sign upon your hands, 
the document says, 
and back in bed I tuck 

my hands in the elastic
of my underwear, hear 
o Israel and wait 

for sleep to bind me, 
return me to the ocean’s
oneness, crumble 

the mountains and shore, 
before your voice 
again pulses over 

the air between our rooms, 
your pledge of allegiance 
to the country I bid you enter.