Basic HTML Version
40
JEWISH BOOK ANNUAL
us on how to read an invisible
mezuzah
betwixt and between
the lines:
the hinges in doors are like hidden conditions
upon which everything turns
they’re like the small print in contracts
a door depends on its hinges.
Re-guarding a door, so much depends on a timeworn covenant
at thresholds for the coming and going of ages. And in con
clusion, Robert Pinsky offers both the metaphoric and literal
senses of the
mezuzah.
On the one hand, “The Ghost Hammer”:
“Hand on the doorknob between Sheol and Creation, / Stalled
on the threshold, unable to cross”; on the other hand, his “Mem
oir” crosses that threshold: “And you shall fasten / These
words onto your doorposts and your gates / And so we did.”