26 Oct Abraham Rejoiced to See This Day
Follow me with this haunted thread from the Scripture’s loom,
Hear the guttural confession, antequam Abraham fieret ego sum.
The shock of the holy spindle lurching from its pointed end
Finds me at a loss, a shuddering captive no comforts attend,
No! I could never conceive germane horror, or the proper fear
Pertaining to knowing sight of the Unspeakable Ancient near
From beyond history’s bleak fog from those dim halcyon days
Piercing, a polished lance, the Eternal Presence or Supernal Gaze
Before all things, but one Thing preceding the unit of all measure
Whose own utterance instanced numbers and invented all pleasure
From ages unto ages before evils, dimensions, monsters, pain
His words plaited clustered clouds which dispense the saving rain,
He stopped up the River with sand, its twin with carcass-mire
And drew out the childless father from the sooted grate of furnace-fire
Weaving out the songs of the willows into harmonies of lament
Who thought of Zion before beasts had mates, or reeds by winds bent:
No! what could mere flesh flabbergasted somatically stammer
To the fact of a grim shade from a falling ten-ton pearl hammer
Arriving today, a wild crash of lightning, a sudden visit from He
Who untangled unmixed light from silken darkness of heaven’s sea,
Hark! He in anxious prose prophets shrieked by hidden protean Ghost
Who raises from the waters fire, who raises from stones an iron host
Echoing down long corridors of mirrored halls we cannot discern.
We the perplexed recite the best what in dismal vale we would learn
Regarding deeds, and what must be done, and now the Weaver of the Law
Unveils Himself with splendor in speech and comely in reason’s awe,
What does It want? what could It possibly want from our miserable day?
Its eyes, fixed on us, searches our naked spirits, Its hands feeling clay,
His avenging eyes bewitched with an erotic quest for sudden doom
Grasped in His guttural confession, antequam Abraham fieret ego sum.
If I believe it, I confess I stand before the most hidden of all dark things
Only know by the hyrax from its hole, or words the jackdaw sings,
Here a faith imperfect and largess of hubris act out the same,
For both raise their stones in either panic or their own gain
Both caught in the thicket by the head — ah, to be the ram!
Who hears dripping dread in BEFORE ABRAHAM WAS, I AM.
Poplar leaves rolled along terraced paths, waterlogged with dew,
A cursed eagle chuckled; it saw startling things, and never knew.