J’ai oublié mon parapluie – a poem for Noach

Come, let us descend and confuse their speech there, so that one person will not understand another’s speech. ~ Genesis 11:7

I took seven years of French. Three in middle school,
and then four more in high school.

So when I go to France I can order a baguette
with all the confidence that education earned me.

I even once told a shopkeeper in Montmartre
j’ai oublié mon parapluie (I forgot my umbrella)

which opened up a world of lost umbrellas to me
on a rainy Paris evening in 1995. The problem is

my brain doesn’t work as fast in both directions.
It’s so believable when I ask the docent at the museum

où est la poubelle (where is the trashcan) that they
will assume I know the language I am speaking

and respond in their native tongue with a
series of words I recognize, but which get lost

in the pathways of my comprehension.
This must have been what it was like at

the Tower of Babel when Abraham’s ancestors
tried to reach the God part of the sky.

They ended up with tongues that didn’t know
the same words. And so it is today, though

Google Translate may have invalidated the
entire punishment. I hope this doesn’t empower us

to build more towers. Let the Divine descend
among us when It will. We just have to work on

recognizing It.

Rick Lupert, a poet, songleader and graphic designer, is the author of 28 books including “God Wrestler: A Poem for Every Torah Portion.” Visit him at www.JewishPoetry.net