Rites and Ceremonies
I. The Room
Father, Adonoi, author of all things
of the three states,
the soft light on the barn at dawn,
a wind that sings
in the bracken, fire in iron gates,
the ram’s horn,
Furnisher, hinger of heaven, who bound
the lovely Pleiades,
entered the perfect treasuries of the snow,
established the round
course of the world, birth, death and disease
and caused to…
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Water without Sound
The sea
tore a rib from its side
and said:
Go! Lie down there, be
a sign that I
am great and mighty.
Go
be a sign.
The canal
lies at my window,
speechless.
What can be sadder
than water
without…
Meditation
After Jehudah Halevi
How long will you remain a boy?
Dawns must end.
Behold the angels of old age.
Shake off temporal things then
the way a bird shakes off the night dew.
Dart like a swallow
from…
Passover
I set my table with metaphor:
the curling parsley—green sign nailed to the doors
of God’s underground; salt of desert and eyes;
the roasted shank bone of a Pascal lamb,
relic of sacrifice and…
Woodchucks
Gassing the woodchucks didn’t turn out right.
The knockout bomb from the Feed and Grain Exchange
was featured as merciful, quick at the bone
and the case we had against them was airtight,
both exits…
Diving into the Wreck
First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am…
Acclimatization
I forget meticulously
I forget scrupulously
my native landscape
my daily landscape
I forget the ragged
I forget the billowy
clouds in a sky
clouds over a town
I forget to the end
I forget…