by Ann Astell
A teenaged girl upon a ladder, hang-
ing ornaments like globes and golden stars
up high, suspended from the ceiling, hang-
ing them by silver strings that shone like bars
of light across the darkened hall.
Transformed into a heaven for the night,
the ceiling was a lovers’ sky, a ball-
room’s fictive galaxy, where dancers might
go wheeling, waltzing, dreaming; hear the sound
of distant angels singing carols to
the music of the band. On higher ground,
rare constellations held her raptured view.
On Jacob’s ladder’s upper rung she stood,
her heart attached to a supernal good.
2.
Saint Francis loved the stars, his brother sun,
his sister moon, and who would say that they
refused his benediction, turned away
from blessing? Did they not like lovers run
to meet each other? Dancing in the sky,
their radiance like blushes, turning red
the morning’s east, the evening’s west, the spread
of joy suffused in colored clouds on high,
that all creation might be burnt aglow
with love’s pure fire, praising heaven’s Lord,
his blazing wisdom and his holy word
that made the stars, the sunlight, and the snow.
“O blest be thou, our sister star, that rose
to greet the Son in Mary’s arms enclosed!”
3.
I saw her picture in a Christian church,
an icon of a Jewish Mary whose
dark-eyed gaze looked past me, seeing something,
someone far beyond me, distant in the blues
and blacks of backgrounds yet remembered and
foreseen. Her face was haunted by some grief
that no lament could lessen, no, nor rite
reduce, nor Kaddish bring relief.
Upon her cloak a yellow star was sewn,
the Star of David, sign six-pointed, mark
of all the outcasts and the chosen ones,
of Rachel’s children murdered in the dark,
a badge of sorrow sharp and singular—
maternal tears and David’s royal star.
4.
When Abraham was counting stars and sand
to number his descendants, did he think
of you, of me, as granules on the shore,
as spots of sparkle, shining on the brink
of endless space? Or did the father think
of only one, of his beloved son
Isaac, and then, imagining his face
before him, wail, recalling deeds undone—
so horrible a sacrifice, so great
a loss—that countless lives would be regained
because his hand refrained, held back, and seized
a substitute that left his knife unstained
by human blood? Yes, Isaac was the star
through whom he glimpsed redemption from afar.
