Meditations on the Fall and Winter Holidays

by Charles Reznikoff

I
New Year's

The solid houses in the mist 
are thin as tissue paper; 
the water laps slowly at the rocks; 
and the ducks from the north are here 
at rest on the grey ripples. 

The company in which we went 
so free of care, so carelessly, 
has scattered. Good-bye, 
to you who lie behind in graves, 
to you who galloped proudly off! 
Pockets and heart are empty. 

This is the autumn and our harvest--
such as it is, such as it is--
the beginnings of the end, bare trees and barren ground; 
but for us only the beginning: 
let the wild goat's horn and the silver trumpet sound!

Reason upon reason 
to be thankful: 
for the fruit of the earth, 
for the fruit of the tree, 
for the light of the fire, 
and to have come to this season. 

The work of our hearts is dust 
to be blown about in the winds 
by the God of our dead in the dust 
but our Lord delighting in life 
(let the wild goat's horn 
and the silver trumpet sound!)
our God Who imprisons in coffin and grave 
and unbinds the bound. 

You have loved us greatly and given us 
Your laws 
for an inheritance, 
Your sabbaths, holidays, and seasons of gladness, 
distinguishing Israel 
from other nations--
distinguishing us 
above the shoals of men. 
And yet why should we be remembered--
if at all--only for peace, if grief 
is also for all? Our hopes, 
if they blossom, if they blossom at all, the petals 
and fruit fall. 

You have given us the strength 
to serve You, 
but we may serve or not 
as we please; 
not for peace nor for prosperity, 
not even for length of life, have we merited 
remembrance; remember us 
as the servants 
You have inherited. 

from: The Complete Poems of Charles Reznikoff. Copyright 1976.

IMPORTANT THINGS ARE SO EASY TO LOSE TRACK OF SOMETIMES.

Te Deum       
by Charles Reznikoff

Not because of victories
I sing,
having none,
but for the common sunshine,
the breeze,
the largess of the spring.

Not for victory
but for the day's work done
as well as I was able;
not for a seat upon the dais
but at the common table.


From The Complete Poems of Charles Reznikoff. Copyright © 1976 by Charles Reznikoff.

I Watch The News, And I Wonder How Far Away These Times Really Are.

from: Testimony: The United States (1885-1915), Recitative
by Charles Reznikoff

Several white men went at night to the Negro's
house,
shot into it,
and set fire to his cotton on the gallery
his wife and children ran under the bed
and as the firing from guns and pistols went on
and the cotton blazed up, ran through a side door
into the woods.
The Negro himself, badly wounded, fled to the
house of a neighbor—
a white man--
and got inside.
He was followed,
and one of those who ran after him
put a shotgun against the white man's door
and shot a hole through it.
Justice, however, was not to be thwarted,
for five of the men who did this to the Negro
were tried:
for "unlawfully and maliciously
injuring and disfiguring"-
the white man's property.

Charles Reznikoff wrote at length in verse of the black experience in America in, Testimony: The United States (1885-1915), Recitative. A refrain entitled "Negroes," is comprised of court testimony from cases involving blacks, rendered into verse patterns by the poet. Testimony dispassionately allows the reality of that life to speak for itself. - Aldon Lynn Nielsen 

Reznikoff allows the irony of America's racial injustices to foreground itself in these pieces, as in this one, which makes no comment on the fact that there were no charges for destroying a black man's property or for assaulting him and his family. - from "Reading Race" White American Poets and the Racial Discourse in the Twentieth Century. Copyright © 1986 by The University of Georgia Press.