December 14, 2025
Sunday

A white curtain turning in an open window. 

A swan, dipping a white neck in the trees’ shadow, 
Hardly beating the water with golden feet. 

Sorrow before her 
Was gone like noise from a street, 
Snow falling. 
— Charles Reznikoff, 1894-1976
American, son of Russian Jews fleeing the pogroms of the 1880s

I am still recovering from the physical and emotional consequences of the sugar-triggered panic attack that grabbed me up three days ago. I managed to get out for lunch with friends, and then a bit of blizzard shopping (a ritual in Pennsylvania that involves procuring supplies for sandwiches and French toast, plus toilet paper and alcohol — I just needed the bread and a spare bottle of half-and-half). I was exhausted when I got home, and lay down for a (planned) short nap that lasted more than three hours. My inner clock was all a-kilter then, and I stayed awake until four in the morning (It’s four in the morning, the end of December — thank you, Leonard, again) doing nothing really of any importance.

I woke then after 8:30 to about 3 inches of the “minimal accumulation” of heavy wet snow that had been predicted for my area. I learned that there had been a shooting at Brown University, and one in Bondi Beach in Australia where it’s in the balmy 70s and a large Jewish community was enjoying Chanukah, and another in Paducah, Kentucky, killing a pregnant woman caught in a web of domestic violence. I took up my morning C&C (Coffee and Contemplation), and decided to experience Gaudete Sunday online instead of in person, even though my snow removal crew arrived in time for me to have gone out safely. I stayed inside all day.

That was twelve hours ago. As I write this now, it’s 19° and I can hear beyond the trees on my property line the sounds of the neighboring church’s youth group that meets every Sunday night. They seem louder and more raucous than usual (that is not a complaint).

Gaudete Sunday is all about hope and excitement and forward motion. Charles Reznikoff wrote in a direct and  and unembellished style. His work embodies a sense of solitude. Some critics think he didn’t write directly enough about the Holocaust. Others, like Bob Perelman, defend him noting that while Reznikoff’s early writing involves the lives of Jewish immigrants in America, “his later poems tend to be short ruminations of a solitary walker noticing bushes, birds, clouds, pedestrians.”

I didn’t open my windows today so that a white curtain could turn in it. The children yonder have evidently ended their Sunday night romp. Somehow, though, sorrow has gone from me today.

See you tomorrow.