Translation

By Alison Hurwitz

I knew about the hush of reverence when entering
cathedrals, knew the smells of incense,
the sweet and heated breath of waxen candles,
rendering their pentecostal tongues within a momentary gust,
the wooden creak as ponderous as history
when doors swung open to admit us,
the sudden change from bright and blustering cacophony
to dim and echoed whispers feathered out
against the shadowed cooling redolence of stone
that held so many layered years.
That heft and weight would settle heavy silence
on my youthful shoulders, make me mute and solemn.

Then later, my youthful palm encased and moist
so nervous in the British Museum, holding tight,
clutching avidly against my mother’s slender fingers,
I found another kind of veneration.
Each footfall reinforced the tread of human
inquiry, echoing procession through that rare
and awestruck air: inexorable, it drew us closer.
Soon we saw the stone incised with petroglyphs,
three different scripts conscripting loyalty,
conferring godlike status to a thirteen-year old
pharaoh, Ptolemy V, translating him
into a son of Horus, Egypt’s Sun, and ruler
of both land and sky.
How heavy it must have felt to bear those names,
to heave the earth and heavens up
upon his adolescent shoulders,
to be a god while quaking inwardly,
his own palms damp with trepidation.

Even then, my seven-year-old self could sense
how language altars our reality, can script us
into scripture, inscribes our understanding,
and metaphorphs the meaning of our human time.
Even then, I felt the weight of words
intoning me to silence.
I lived apotheosis before my child’s mind
could speak or understand the word:
the power of the stories that we write,
the tales that tell themselves across
our shortened span of time and
echo in our ears with long forgotten messages.

Now, somehow, I still return,
when half my life is over,
to that reverential pause
before a stone encased in light;
that moment when I understood my awe,
when chirography incised its lines into my memory,
translating me from eager child
into a worshipper of words.

Alison Hurwitz holds a B.A. in English and Anthropology from Lawrence University.  She is a dancer, a wedding and memorial service officiant, communication coach and poet.  During Shelter in Place for COVID 19, she has written one poem a day, a practice she plans to continue. When not writing, she treasures time with her husband, two young sons, and their beloved rescue dog.  She lives in San Jose, CA.