A sonnet, or: Seventy
A Shakespearean Sonnet
You’ve flown again to streets you know as home,
Where evening turns the limestone walls to light;
Through you this city first to me was known,
And now lives on as your grandchild’s birthright.
Today we mark the years that brought you here,
The number Papa chuckled at each spring;
That Seder line amused him every year,
An ageless joke that always made him grin.
You came here young and found your life made whole,
Where being Jewish needed no disguise;
You taught me Israel’s claim on our souls:
That we belong ’neath Jerusalem’s skies.
Today at seventy, you’ve lived to see
The life your love made possible for me.
A Birthday Sonnet for My Mother
Today my mother is celebrating her 70th birthday here in Jerusalem, the city she loves most in the world. My parents moved to Israel from the Soviet Union when they were young, and their love for Jerusalem and Israel shaped my own life. Because of them, I chose to build my life here too, and now their granddaughter is growing up in Israel as well.
This sonnet also remembers my father, who died in 2018 at the age of 70. Every year during Passover, he would laugh about a famous line from the Haggadah, the book Jews read during the Passover meal called the Seder. In that line, a rabbi says he is “like a man of seventy years.” My father always found something funny and meaningful about that line, and he would smile whenever he read it aloud.
Mishnah, Tractate Berakhot 1:5
אָמַר רַבִּי אֶלְעָזָר בֶּן עֲזַרְיָה, הֲרֵי אֲנִי כְּבֶן שִׁבְעִים שָׁנָה…
Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya said: I am as one who is seventy years old…So this poem is not only about a birthday. It is also about family, memory, Jerusalem, Jewish belonging, and the way love for a homeland can pass from one generation to the next.
Shakespearean Sonnet?
A Shakespearean sonnet is a poem with 14 lines. It was made famous by William Shakespeare.
The poem is divided into:
- 3 groups of 4 lines, called quatrains
- 1 group of 2 lines at the end, called a couplet
The rhyme pattern is: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
- line 1 rhymes with line 3,
- line 2 rhymes with line 4,
- and so on.
Most Shakespearean sonnets are also written in a rhythm called iambic pentameter. This means each line usually has 10 syllables with a soft-hard beat pattern, like:
da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM
Let’s write poetry together!
When it comes to partnership, some humans can make their lives alone – it’s possible. But creatively, it’s more like painting: you can’t just use the same colours in every painting. It’s just not an option. You can’t take the same photograph every time and live with art forms with no differences.
–
Ben Harper (b. 1969)
Would you like to create poetry with me and have a completed poem of yours featured here at the Skeptic’s Kaddish? I am very excited to have launched the ‘Poetry Partners’ initiative and am looking forward to meeting and creating with you… Check it out!
#Birthday #Daughter #Family #Israel #Jerusalem #Love #Memories #Mother #Poem #Poetry #Sonnet
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