I am one of those who could tell every word the pin went through. Page after page I could imagine the scar in a thousand crowned letters….
The dancing floor of the pin is bereft of angels. The Christians no longer want to debate. Jews have forgotten the best arguments. If I spelled out the Principles of Faith I would be barking on the moon.
I will never be free from this old tyranny: “I believe with a perfect faith….”
Why make trouble? It is better to stutter than sing. Become like the early Moses: dreamless of Pharaoh. Become like Abram: dreamless of a longer name. Become like a weak Rachel: be comforted, not comfortless….
There was a promise to me from a rainbow, there was a covenant with me after a flood drowned all my friends, inundated every field: the ones we had planted with food and the ones we had left untilled.
Who keeps promises except in business? We were not permitted to own land in Russia. Who wants to own land anywhere? I stare dumbfounded at the trees. Montreal trees, New York trees, Kovno trees. I never wanted to own one. I laugh at the scholars in real estate….
Soldiers in close formation. Paratroops in a white Tel Aviv street. Who dares disdain an answer to the ovens? Any answer.
I did not like to see the young men stunted in the Polish ghetto. Their curved backs were not beautiful. Forgive me, it gives me no pleasure to see them in uniform. I do not thrill to the sight of Jewish battalions.
But there is only one choice between ghettos and battalions, between whips and the weariest patriotic arrogance….
I wanted to keep my body free as when it woke up in Eden. I kept it strong. There are commandments.
Erase from my flesh the marks of my own whip. Heal the razor slashes on my arms and throat. Remove the metal clamps from my fingers. Repair the bones I have crushed in the door.
Do not let me lie down with spiders. Do not let me encourage insects against my eyes. Do not let me make my living nest with worms or apply to my stomach the comb of iron or bind my genitals with cord.
It is strange that even now prayer is my natural Language….
Night, my old night. The same in every city, beside every lake. It ambushes a thicket of thrushes. It feeds on the houses and fields. It consumes my journals of poems.
The black, the loss of sun: it will always frighten me. It will always lead me to experiment. My journal is filled with combinations. I adjust prayers like the beads of an abacus….
Thou. Reach into the vineyard of arteries for my heart. Eat the fruit of ignorance and share with me the mist and fragrance of dying.
Thou. Your fist in my chest is heavier than any bereavement, heavier than Eden, heavier than the Torah scroll….
The language in which I was trained: spoken in despair of priestliness.
This is not meant for any pulpit, not for men to chant or tell their children. Not beautiful enough.
But perhaps this can suggest a passion. Perhaps this passion could be brought to clarify, make more radiant, the standing Law.
Let judges secretly despair of justice: their verdicts will be more acute. Let generals secretly despair of triumph; killing will be defamed. Let priests secretly despair of faith: their compassion will be true. It is the tension….
My poems and dictionaries were written at night from my desk or from my bed. Let them cry loudly for life at your hand. Let me be purified by their creation. Challenge me with purity.
O break down these walls with music. Purge from my flesh the need to sleep. Give me eyes for your darkness. Give me legs for your mountains. Let me climb to your face with my argument. If I am unprepared, unclean, lead me first to deserts full of jackals and wolves where I will learn what glory or humility the sand can teach, and from beasts the direction of my evil.
I did not wish to dishonour the scrolls with my logic, or David with my songs. In my work I meant to love you but my voice dissipated somewhere before your infinite regions. And when I gazed toward your eyes all the bristling hills of Judaea intervened.
I played with the idea that I was the Messiah….
I saw a man gouge out his eye,
hold it in his fist
until the nursing sky
grew round it like a vast and loving face.
With shafts of light
I saw him mine his wrist
until his blood filled out the rest of space
and settled softly on the world
like morning mist.
Who could resist such fireworks?
I wrestled hard in Galilee.
In the rubbish of pyramids
and strawless bricks
I felled my gentle enemy.
I destroyed his cloak of stars.
It was an insult to our human flesh,
worse than scars.
If we could face his work, submit it to annotation….
You raged before them
like the dreams of their old-time G-d.
You smashed your body
like tablets of the Law.
You drove them from the temple counters.
Your whip on their loins
was a beginning of trouble.
Your thorns in their hearts
was an end to love.
O come back to our books.
Decorate the Law with human commentary.
Do not invoke a spectacular death.
There is so much to explain—
the miracles obscure your beauty….
Doubting everything that I was made to write. My dictionaries groaning with lies. Driven back to Genesis. Doubting where every word began. What saint had shifted a meaning to illustrate a parable. Even beyond Genesis, until I stood outside my community, like the man who took too many steps on Sabbath. Faced a desolation which was unheroic, unbiblical, no dramatic beasts.
The real deserts are outside of tradition….
The chimneys are smoking. The little wooden synagogues are filled with men. Perhaps they will stumble on my books of interpretation, useful to anyone but me.
The white tablecloths—whiter when you spill the wine….
Desolation means no angels to wrestle. I saw my brothers dance in Poland. Before the final fire I heard them sing. I could not put away my scholarship or my experiments with blasphemy.
(In Prague their Golem slept.)
Desolation means no ravens, no black symbols. The carcass of the rotting dog cannot speak for you. The ovens have no tongue. The flames thud against the stone roofs. I cannot claim that sound.
Desolation means no comparisons….
“Our needs are so manifold, we dare not declare them.”
It is painful to recall a past intensity, to estimate your distance from the Belsen heap, to make your peace with numbers. Just to get up each morning is to make a kind of peace.
It is something to have fled several cities. I am glad that I could run, that I could learn twelve languages, that I escaped conscription with a trick, that borders were only stones in an empty road, that I kept my journal.
Let me refuse solutions, refuse to be comforted….
Tonight the sky is luminous. Roads of cloud repeat themselves like the ribs of some vast skeleton.
The easy gulls seem to embody a doomed conception of the sublime as they wheel and disappear into the darkness of the mountain. They leave the heart, they abandon the heart to the Milky Way, that drunkard’s glittering line to a physical god….
Sometimes, when the sky is this bright, it seems that if I could only force myself to stare hard at the black hills I could recover the gulls. It seems that nothing is lost that is not forsaken: The rich old treasures still glow in the sand under the tumbled battlement; wrapped in a starry flag a master-God floats through the firmament like a childless kite.
I will never be free from this tyranny.
A tradition composed of the exuviae of visions. I must resist it. It is like the garbage river through a city: beautiful by day and beautiful by night, but always unfit for bathing.
There were beautiful rules: a way to hear thunder, praise a wise man, watch a rainbow, learn of tragedy.
All my family were priests, from Aaron to my father. It was my honour to close the eyes of my famous teacher.
Prayer makes speech a ceremony. To observe this ritual in the absence of arks, altars, a listening sky: this is a rich discipline.
I stare dumbfounded at the trees. I imagine the scar in a thousand crowned letters. Let me never speak casually.
Inscription for the family spice-box:
Make my body
a pomander for worms
and my soul
the fragrance of cloves.
Let the spoiled Sabbath
leave no scent.
Keep my mouth
from foul speech.
Lead your priest
from grave to vineyard.
Lay him down
where air is sweet.