Dayenu: The refrain from a song in the Passover seder that means, “It would have been enough.”
If there had only been stars with their stitches of light and no planets—that would have been enough
If there had been only lifeless planets with strands of quartz and gold—Dayenu
If there had been just the breathing oceans vaulting against boulders
Only the microorganisms with their endless division and multiplication
If there had been only forests of coral
Merely the minnows their tiny hearts flicking inside glass bodies
If there had been only the firefish the butterfly fish and seahorses disguised as kelp
Only the desert and its runnels of sand
Just green beards of grass and no redwoods
If there had been only black onyx no lemon serpentine no azurite
Only the insects with their x-ray wings and flashing songs
Just the geometry of snake skins and no mammals
Only gray mice their hearts valving six hundred times a minute
If there had been nothing but a hummingbird pinning itself in midair
Only the elephant with its vault of bones only the zebra so unaware of its own beauty
Only monkeys chattering their no language—that would have been enough
Only the first humans weighing their young in their arms—Dayenu
Only that and not the peacock domes of Isfahan
Not the “Mood Indigo” of Ella’s Ellington album
Or the white stone garden of Ryoanji Temple where no viewer can see every dark rock
No broken torso of Apollo
Or acts of love beyond number
Would it really have been enough?
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Zack Rogow is the author, editor, or translator of twenty books or plays. His eighth book of poems, Talking with the Radio: poems inspired by jazz and popular music, was published in 2015 by Kattywompus Press. He is also writing a series of plays about authors, incorporating their writing into the action. The most recent of these, Colette Uncensored, had its first staged reading at the Millennium Stage of the Kennedy Center in Washington DC in 2015 and had a five-month run at The Marsh in San Francisco and Berkeley in 2016. His blog, Advice for Writers, has 190 posts on topics of interest to writers. Currently he teaches in the low-residency MFA in writing program at the University of Alaska Anchorage and serves as a contributing editor of Catamaran Literary Reader. www.zackrogow.com
Photo credit: Dirk Dreyer www.dreyerpictures.com
