Every Poetic Gezundheit

I am not sentimental about old men

mumbling the Hebrew by rote

with no more feeling than one says gesundheit
- Marge Piercy

Amidst hearing
Even while seeing
Poets can be deaf
Poets can be blind
Missing what they miss
Wishing not to find

Many cramped rooms
Filled with old men
Many words, many years
Again, again.

Marge Piercy likes
Feeling every moment but
Is unsentimental
About old Jewish men
Reciting words by rote

Did Marge’s movement
Trading dusty books for ripe tomatoes
Get it better by and large?
Are their young not riding by rote?
Mumbling their own gezundheits?
Building their own temples?

Even if for her
It must be either or
Has Marge ever wondered
If that’s the way it is?

Has it dawned on her that
Maybe these men’s mumbled words
Have carried them to survive to see
More blessings than she can imagine?

I’d write more, but I’m tired
From rising early today
Listening and mumbling
For three hours with ten
Ninety year old men

These are men
who’d sooner die
Than miss one morning of prayer
Men who count their blessings
Every krecht, every day

Men whose every gezundheit
Is more poetic than any
Award winning sneeze.