Day of Atonement as Observed
by a Non-Jewish Woman
On this day like every year
since the Israelites received mercy
on the unforgiving sands of the Sinai,
my neighbors walk the cracked sidewalks
of Broadway down to their synagogue on West 89th.
They go to hear the shofar blown
loud and stirring
long and steady
the sound vibrating
through the hollow of a ram’s horn,
though I cannot hear it where I stand
in my doorway looking on
at the entwined groups: men in yarmulkes,
women pushing strollers, joking teens,
all briskly walking and bright with purpose.
I imagine
all the people I know and don’t know
in these dirty streets
hearing the mournful yet silvery sound—
the whole eight million of us
drawing sweet water
from a well we didn’t know existed—
far below the sewers and tunnels
far below the billion-year-old bedrock—
the whole of the city turning out,
even the animals and birds,
to hear unleashed in our streets
the sound of forgiveness
blasting so loud so clear
that we might become as glass
transparent and vulnerable
holding for a moment
the living water for ourselves
before we break open
and flow.
• • •
Kathryn Kimball grew up in Montgomery, Alabama, has an MFA and PhD, and taught writing and nineteenth-century English literature. Her translations and poems have appeared in various literary journals. She published a chapbook in 2021 and a volume of poetry in 2025, and won the Columbia Journal 2023 translation prize.