Before Friday dinner at a restaurant
and a movie or play, she lights
the Sabbath candles in the kitchen sink

to protect her house from fire,
and feels (lips trembling
the ancient blessing, face veiled

by fringes of a dishtowel)
a certain orrery of spheres,
and at her weekly instant

of connection with what once was,
is queen again,
she who remembers the dead put

in the earth bent at the knees,
as conceived inside,
who was worshipped at the altars

of Armana, Midian, Ur,
who rocked the cradle of civilization
before it turned on her, crying

out the name of God,
who tamed the terror of childbirth
now consoled inside her ceremony,

unknowing, (in her fullest
splendor, alone, above the sink)
bending to light.

"The Genesis of Tradition" appeared in the 1991 issue of The Signal, in a slightly different form.