Our Star

Every day, whether we realize it or not,

we choose one of two stars to guide us,

a star as ephemeral as our life,

a star water can wash away. One star

is made of packed sugar, the other

of packed salt. Water melts both.

If we choose the star of sugar

we will follow all the sweet things

of the earth, the candied surfaces

that glisten, reflecting a honied light.

If salt, we will go the way of the seas-

restless, tossing broken dolls

and the timbers of drowned ships

onto everyone’s shore.

The way of salt

is the way of sorrow and loss,

for salt seeds every tear

before it blossoms, just as death

seeds every birth. Salt is the pillar

erected to those who have looked

when they were warned not to.

At night the star illuminates our sleep,

yet before dawn it is washed away,

so that every morning we must choose again.

The poor choose the star of salt.

They break it into pieces, grind it up,

and eat it with their rough bread.

Salt is the only star in their heaven.

It is no choice at all. Invariably

the rich choose the star of sugar.

Under its light they build roads

that pass the shanties of the poor

and lead to gingerbread mansions.

I choose the star of salt. I follow it

into grocery stores and factories.

The cashiers and barbers watch me,

and the steelworkers and foreign pickers

bent over shovels or rows of lettuce.

They are silent, brooding, distrustful.

Every morning I choose their star

because it is my star also,

because it is the rich man’s star,

although he doesn’t know it, not yet.

Every morning I choose this star

because the salt grains hiss

on the shore as the sea washes up

the ground bones of the starless dead.

Morton Marcus

Shouting Down the Silence:

Verse Poems, 1988-2001

Creative Arts Book Company