Three Poems for the Sabbath

Davening

Who turns away from everything the world

Can offer and focuses only on the Law

As though the gift of Sinai was a desert

And only Egyptians danced around the calf.

Who bends his knees before the idol, curled

His finger and poked out his eye. The flaw

Contains a thousand metaphors and curt

Expressions, and davening flashes less than half.

Can ignorance pretend to understand

The meaning of the universe? A camel

Pass the needle’s gate? Under the sand

Where time runs out an ancient tomb, El

And Baal uncircumcised, silent, dry:

Yet cut into the shape of wisdom’s eye.

Across the River

Did he want to run away from his father, the faith

Of his ancestors, the anxiety

That oppressed him in his secret-most heart? The eighth

Day always seemed a new beginning, where free

And innocent, the mind explored itself—

Yet all night long, long in darkness, hot

Confused and breathless, he fought the little elf,

Escaping after questions remain unanswered, not

Unchanged, a new name imposed—but why

The sudden change of heart? He sought the hearth

So long abandoned, cold with ashes, dry

And pallid as the bones he ground, like earth

Exposed after a long deluge whose fangs

Deucalion and his wife tossed back in thanks.

 

Like or Unlike

Know nothing or nothing at all, not even this:

The oracle commands in riddles, Know thyself.

Another manifestation appears in the kiss

Of the peaceful king and his troubled daughter—wealth

And wisdom wasted together in so much bliss.

Of their intimacy, their ecstasy.  Yet by stealth

Disguised as a foolish matron, Metis flits

From mind to mind in a time of tantrums, fights

Between the worshippers of Phoebus, light

Beyond light, and old Dionysius, god of nights,

Of drunkenness, master of sleight

Of words. In that confusion, the Righter of Rites

Explodes over ancient cities like a comet

And overwhelms the tragedy like a comic.