"The Eve of Rosh Hashanah" by Yehuda Amichai

The eve of Rosh Hashanah. At the house that’s being built,
a man makes a vow: not to do anything wrong in it,
only to love.

Sins that were green last spring

dried out over the summer. Now they're whispering.

So I washed my body and I clipped my fingernails,

the last good deed a man can do for himself

while he's still alive. 

What is man? In the daytime he untangles into words

what night turns into a heavy coil.  

What do we do to one another—

a son to his father, a father to his son?

And between them and death there's nothing

but a wall of words

like a battery of agitated lawyers. 

And whoever uses people as handles or as rungs of a ladder

will soon find himself hugging a stick of wood

and holding a severed hand and wiping his tears 

with a potsherd. 

Discovered via this article by Rosie Schaap.