The Mirror by Adrienne Rich

Is it in hopes

to find or lose myself

that I

fill up my table now

with Michelet and Motley?

to ‘know how it was’

or to forget how it is–

what else?

Split at the root, neither Gentile nor Jew,

Yankee nor Rebel, born

in the face of two ancient cults,

I’m a good reader of histories.

And you,

Morris Cohen, dear to me as a brother,

when you sit at night

tracing your way through your volumes

of Josephus or any

of the old Judaic chronicles,

do you find yourself there, a simpler

more eloquent jew?

or do you read

to shut out the tick-tock of self,

the questions and their routine answers?