Service I don’t mean plates
Or silverware But words or thoughts or memories Of smoky columns in the air And dogged faithfulness A sort of returning Surf, an empty castle Whose lights are burning, A strong donkey, a A mountain path, And numbers clustered in the brush, The bluff above their aftermath, These are the bricks that build delight That do not let it turn to plague Whose lines of foam are deep, intense, Tangled skeins that are not vague.
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When we are cleaned and shine
Like buttons, a kind Of glow that goes beneath The surface of the mind And we are filled with surf Roar joy that wells At midnight, and we grow Wealthy in the suitcases of our cells, The fear of Parkinson’s disease, The suffering that could be eased By drifting into Canadian snow And the heavy coin of the heart seized By not having enough, and The end that came too soon, before It could be done right, are met With light upon the roaring shore. I am more afraid of the small worm
Than the beetling cliff I stumble into scrabble yesterday And do not see the ocean if. With your righteousness, They are exalted, And the black troops’ Swaying swords are halted. All of the names in the world
Are too narrow for us: Fred, Ned, Ed, stumbling about in Too-tight jeans, falling, outspread, All of them pinched, stingy, None of them expressing The lava deep within, Burning, phosphorescing. When we say the names, We know that we shake The curtain that hides Within within, opaque Expressions of flesh And spirit. We recoil With pain, till the Fragrant sage rises from the soil. |
Yaacov David Shulman
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