Government was done in palaces.
Judges, their fortunes found in law,
reclining and cosmopolitan, praised reason.
Commerce like a strong wild garden
flourished in the street.
The coins were bright, the crest on coins precise,
new ones looked almost wet.
Why did Isaiah rage and cry,
Jerusalem is ruined,
your cities are burned with fire?
On the fragrant hills of Gilboa
were the shepherds ever calmer,
the sheep fatter, the white wool whiter?
There were fig trees, cedar, orchards
where men worked in perfume all day long.
New mines as fresh as pomegranates.
Robbers were gone from the roads,
the highways were straight.
There were years of wheat against famine.
I 73
Enemies? Who has heard of a righteous state
that has no enemies,
but the young were strong, archers cunning,
their arrows accurate.
Why then this fool Isaiah,
smelling vaguely of wilderness himself,
why did he shout,
Your country is desolate?
Now will I sing to my well-beloved
a song of my beloved touching her hair
which is pure metal black
no rebel prince can change to dross,
of my beloved touching her body
no false swearer can corrupt,
of my beloved touching her mind
no faithless counsellor can inflame,
of my behJved touching the mountains of spices
making them beauty instead of burning.
Now plunged in unutterable love
Isaiah wanders, chosen, stumbling
against the sculptured walls which consume
their full age in his embrace and powder
as he goes by. He reels beyond
the falling dust of spires and domes,
obliterating ritual: the Holy Name, half-spoken,
is lost on the cantor's tongue; their pages barren,
congregations blink, agonized and dumb.
In the turns of his journey
heavy trees he sleeps under
mature into cinder and crumble:
whole orchards join the wind
74
like rising Hocks of ravens.
The rocks go back to water, the water to waste.
And while Isaiah gently hums a sound
to make the guilty country uncondemned,
all men, truthfully desolate and lonely,
as though witnessing a miracle,
behold in beauty the faces of one another.
I 7s
T H E G E N I U S
For you
I will be a ghetto jew
and dance
and put white stockings
on my twisted limbs
and poison wells
across the town
For you
I will be an apostate jew
and tell the Spanish priest
of the blood vow
in the Talmud
and where the bones
of the child are hid
For you
I will be a banker jew
and bring to ruin
a proud old hunting king
and end his line
For you
I will be a Broadway jew
and cry in theatres
for my mother
and sell bargain goods
beneath the counter
For you
I will be a doctor jew
and search
in all the garbage cans
for foreskins
to sew back again
For you
I will be a Dachau jew
and lie down in lime
with twisted limbs
and bloated pain
no mind can understand
I 77
L I N E S F R O M M Y G R A N D F A T H E R ' S
J O U R N A L
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 7s I
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. . . .
79
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 b
e 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.
0 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 Judea 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
So I
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 God.
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.
0 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 . .
I B I
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
82 I
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
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.
III / Flowers for Hitler
W H A T I ' M D O I N G H E R E
I do not know if the world has lied
I have lied
I do not know if the world has conspired against love
I have conspired against love
The atmosphere of torture is no comfort
I have tortured
Even without the mushroom cloud
still I would have hated
Listen
I would have done the same things
even if there were no death
I will not be held like a drunkard
under the cold tap of facts
I refuse the universal alibi
Like an empty telephone booth passed at night
and remembered
like mirrors in a movie palace lobby consulted
only on the way out
like a nymphomaniac who binds a thousand
into strange brotherhood
I wait
for each one of you to confess
T H E H E A R T H
The day wasn't exactly my own
since I checked
and found it on a public calendar.
Tripping over many pairs of legs
as I walked down the park
I also learned my lust
was not so rare a masterpiece.
Buildings actually built
wars planned with blood and fought
men who rose to genera
ls
deserved an honest thought
as I walked down the park.
I came back quietly to your house
which has a place on a street.
Not a single other house
disappeared when I came back.
You said some suffering
had taught me that.
I'm slow to learn I began
to speak of stars and hurricanes.
Come here little Galileoyou undressed my vision-
it's happier and easier by far
or cities wouldn't be so big.
Later you worked over lace
and I numbered many things
your fingers and all fingers did.
88 1
As if to pay me a sweet
for my ardour on the rug
you wondered in the middle of a stitch:
Now what about those stars and hurricanes?
T H E D R A W E R ' S C O N D I T I O N
O N N O V E M B E R 2 8 , 1 9 6 1
Is there anything emptier
than the drawer where
you used to store your opium?
How like a black-eyed susan
blinded into ordinary daisy
is my pretty kitchen drawer!
How like a nose sans nostrils
is my bare wooden drawer!
How like an eggless basket!
How like a pool sans tortoise!
My hand has explored
my drawer like a rat
in an experiment of mazes.
Reader, I may safely say
there's not an emptier drawer
in all of Christendom!
I Sg
T H E S U I T
I am locked in a very expensive suit
old elegant and enduring
Only my hair has been able to get free
but someone has been leaving
their dandruff in it
Now I will tell you
all there is to know about optimism
Each day in hubcap mirror
in soup reflection
in other people's spectacles
I check my hair
for an army of Alpinists
for Indian rope trick masters
for tangled aviators
for dove and albatross
for insect suicides
for abominable snowmen
I check my hair
for aerialists of every kind
Dedicated as an automatic elevator
I comb my hair for possibilities
I stick my neck out
I lean illegally from locomotive windows
and only for the barber
do I wear a hat
go I
I N D I C T M E N T O F T H E B L U E H O L E
January 28 1 962
You must have heard me tonight
I mentioned you Boo times
Selected Poems, 1956-1968 Page 5