There is no way into
The universe of knowing, Of ethics, whose belt Is tight, of bon moting. When the heart is giddy, when A noble love sluices your torso, Within you is light, Skimming over the Torah, more so, Every Divine name. You are on Every hill, plateau, city Where the air is rarefied, To the horizon, from the gritty To a river that doesn’t stop, That feeds the green-choked Forest, the straining vines, The tangled grass soaked, The mountain cat spore, The usurped nest, and you Are free, filled with sound, Servant to the true And infinite, a cluster Of honor is on your head, Are you a slave or liberated, The poppies streak the meadow red.
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A small point (at the top of the hill,
As though in brief rehearsal, And spilling dimensions down, A drumbeat quaquaversal), A fine line (a universe Whose love and tunes are avid, A star, a nebula,a galaxy, A planet, bursting, gravid), There is the will of the eagle, There is the will of the snake, (The dragon, the unicorn, The serpent in the lake), A worm slithers from the earth, It is invested with mind, With rightness and might, And grows white and kind, Or the stork descends and drags Its claws in the mud, The heavens braid, the desert Creatures flee the flash flood, The fennet fox, the kangaroo rat, You can hear them scrape, The sage and scarlet bugler Drape across the landscape. A stream flows, rapids,
White water, braided, Whose muscular waters Are alive, palisaded, Glinting torrent, Rising surge, bearing On its back rafts, skiffs, Carrying those who seem past caring, At the source of the river, The waterfall tumbles, It is a flood, a roar, Its thunder voice rumbles.. To return to the law
With all of its practical Consequences, loving Its details, the bountiful Slew of its intricate Doodles, together with A culture that rises Past woods, creeks and myth, When the songbird sings And the streams fork And spirit, van Gosh And lofty word, the stork Circle and nest on the Dry land, ruled and Scored, so that song spreads And ideas on the lines of the hand, A vision, a dream, a Fantasy, on the other Hand, the image of a western Hand that meets its eastern brother. When we remember God, we
Grow thirsty, thirsty for Everything that is right and good, And ideal justice comes ashore, In your limbs its wellsprings roar, And pours along the streets, they Are gilded. We come home, we Return to the letter A, And we yearn for what is right, Our hair is burning, the air Is radiant. Only God’s light Glances through the earthenwear, Gives beauty to the canopy, Gives life to the tapir, To the blue morpho butterfly, In the green atmosphere, Life that is just, life That is kind. Proclaim That He is great, past Boundaries Your name. (Supercooled helium can flow
In two streams, each passing through The other. How different they are Than one, but not yet two.) Imprisoned, in a vise, And your spirit wants unfettered Sky. It wants to drink, The light, lettered or unlettered, No barrier across the road On Mt. Amana, no tree, No weather report, no time Of night, claims of moral necessity, But joy. Everything behind a railing Is a mushroom beneath the dripping Leaves, I want the leaves, the rain, I want the climb on the slipping Shale… how difficult these squiggles, These ants, beneath the pathless paths, “Uncover my eyes so that I may see” The crystal chambers past maths. Sometimes, words of prayer glow
They are molten gold, they warm The soul, we feel their source, A vast vortex where lives form, And these words flow, they Fill the cracks in the world, We see the bead of every word Knurled with meaning, how life has swirled Throughout the vacuums and the Traceries of space, we see The vastness of the treasury Of spirit, the leonine solemnity, The vale of their fecundity, And the fear of God fills The atmosphere, the bird, The branch, the stream and the deer. In you I see a field
Of crackling lightning Flames flare and gush The ears of the world are ringing, You are the river dinur We are waking, we are shaken, And you streak, you draw the dawn, And al the seats in Zion have been taken, And people flow from the Andaman Islands, from Kalimantan, From the Chilean shores, Truth on the lip of each woman and man There are two types of trails,
The trails to harvest the olive trees In Rhodes, or meditating on The hills in the antipodes. If your soul is air or fire It is hard to make prints On the soil. Find your Balance where the sun glints On the feldspar. Don’t envy The apples, green or gold, Owned by the farmer living On the soil. His freehold, Even if he is a king of Sorts, wise and righteous as The sun, his bounty, his Crown, platinum, topaz, Are lackluster. Don’t be Afraid. You will not go Hungry. You will be paid For your voice, your duodecimo. And when you shine, you Sprinkle rose water, you Shine upon a single soul, It shivers the whole world through. How difficult to decide,
To choose the powers of my soul, The fuse, the mountain, The sky, the water bowl, The images that straddle The cape of heaven, that Glide above the highest bird, A wheeling, weightless, black cravat Beyond my limited desires, Fireflies on the dusky lawn, Or the will to set the record Straight, to greet the fawn At break of day, to Hear the wind, to see the sky, To read the bark, to hold the scheme, The starry texts that signify, To heal the cicatrix, the scar Of a sidewalk of another land, To check the ladings of the boats And watch them glisten on the sand To weigh the cargo, sofas, Cars, a brace of grouse, a violin, To check the teeth, to examine the sails, The noble and the genuine. |
Yaacov David Shulman
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