First Things RSS Feed - Rachel Hadas https://www.firstthings.com/author/rachel-hadas en-us Copyright 2025 First Things. All Rights Reserved. ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:57:29 -0500 https://d2201k5v4hmrsv.cloudfront.net/img/favicon-196.png First Things RSS Feed Image https://www.firstthings.com/rss/author/rachel-hadas 60 In the Gloom, the Gold https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/10/in-the-gloom-the-gold https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/10/in-the-gloom-the-gold Mon, 01 Oct 2018 00:00:00 -0400 If our days were honeycombed with cells,
waxy partitions, then the gold could ooze
and spill its gleam and sweetness
as easily as light traverses space.
Are honeycombs so porous, though? Can light
pass through a solid wall? I tried to clear
a passage so that radiance could seep through
and flood the dark compartments.

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]]> Cold Prose https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/06/cold-prose https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/06/cold-prose Fri, 01 Jun 2018 00:00:00 -0400 For this last half year I have been troubled by the disease (as I may call it) of translation; the cold prose fits of it . . . are always the most tedious with me . . .
 —John Dryden, “On Translation”

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]]> Vowels into Colors https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/04/vowels-into-colors https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/04/vowels-into-colors Sun, 01 Apr 2018 00:00:00 -0400 A mauve, E grey, I dark, U green, O . . . range.
I do not see you, vowels, in color, so
any paraphrase is clumsy, strange.
But you bleed into one another.   You
adapt and melt.   I feel the textures change.
Duffle coat, army blanket, green to brown:
color’s a garment taken off, put on.
A coded sonnet brick by careful brick
assembled or dismantled, layered thick
as paint splotched on the Haitian artist’s jeans,
the painter who was murdered in the street.
Eloquent, wordless, slathered over vowels,
color clumps and crackles, croons and howls.
Into the bath of silence colors seep
and saturate our sleep.

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]]> Home Improvements https://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/04/home-improvements https://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/04/home-improvements Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 -0400 M ellow and glowing with autumnal red
A nd also ochre striped with golden light,
R epainted bedroom with a brand new bed
L eft made up, crisp sheets awaiting night;
O ld layers overlaid with something fresh,
N ew, and sorting out, giving away,
C lear for a different union of flesh
A nd spirit, window to another day;
L ife turns its wheel of change. To think each wall
I nto another color, and to act,
L inking vision, patience, and skill,
O ver old patterns stroking one bold fact,
V ows renewed, dreams dreamed. This glowing room
E ncloses pure potential, like a womb.

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]]> New City https://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/03/new-city https://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/03/new-city Tue, 01 Mar 2016 00:00:00 -0500 Winter strains toward spring.
A bird is singing in a leafless tree.
The river gleams, the sidewalks glint with ice
or with a hint of possibility.
A blade of sun bisects the afternoon
street. In such a slippery spot I fell,
righted myself, stood up,
and found myself no longer in the winter
but in a city and a season slyly
disguised as ordinary, but transfigured.
The grime of dailiness was all rinsed clean.
In a leafless tree a bird was singing.

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]]> There Are Books in the House https://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/12/there-are-books-in-the-house https://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/12/there-are-books-in-the-house Tue, 01 Dec 2015 00:00:00 -0500 For Gerd Stern

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]]> Balancing https://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/01/balancing https://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/01/balancing Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 -0500 To land in a story whose end I do not know—
as if we ever saw to any end:
I try to keep my balance, high and low.

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]]> Blue, Red, Blue https://www.firstthings.com/article/2014/11/blue-red-blue https://www.firstthings.com/article/2014/11/blue-red-blue Sat, 01 Nov 2014 00:00:00 -0400 After two clashing days—ultramarine
     overlaid with vermilion—
it came to me late the third afternoon
      that as between
anger and grief there’s no comparison.
The choice is easy. Does one have a choice?

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]]> Slow Green https://www.firstthings.com/article/2014/08/slow-green https://www.firstthings.com/article/2014/08/slow-green Fri, 01 Aug 2014 00:00:00 -0400 The elements were stark: a winter wall,
snow, ice, snapped wrist. Through the break
I could just glimpse the color of the bone.
But cold and white, the January crust,
weren’t the whole story. Seasons turn,
bones knit, a secret stirs beneath the snow.

I told myself
my cast, like winter, wouldn’t last forever.
But there was no way to envision this
country of velvet silence on the far
side of a gate I had unlatched in sleep.
A nameless angel’s finger to his lips:

unscaffolded by language, hold the thought?
Not thought, not word. Rather breath. A vow.
Sunlight this late August afternoon
tips its slow green syrup to the lawn.
Mercy so deep I never knew till now.
The break is mended. Here I am with you.

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]]> Equipoise https://www.firstthings.com/article/2014/03/equipoise https://www.firstthings.com/article/2014/03/equipoise Sat, 01 Mar 2014 00:00:00 -0500 Early light slants low across the lawn.
Cuplike, this little valley brims with sun.
Pages fill and empty. In the mist
of a still morning, nothing’s out of reach.
Decades fade, the past glides into range,
recoverable, a pristine cobweb caught
motionless in one slat of morning light.
You’re on your daily walk uphill and back.

Summer’s end balances autumn’s start.
One apple falls without a breath of wind,
but fruit past counting’s hidden in the tall
wet grass. Like this valley now, my heart
is full. I start to climb the hill toward you.
My soul flies out to greet you coming down.

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