Canticle for Goliath’s Fall
XXIII
And he shall go into the clefts of rocks, and into the holes of stones
From the face of the fear of the Lord, and from the glory of his majesty,
When he shall rise up to strike the earth.
Watching as day broke, face still wet from the bouts of my weeping,
Here I resign with the flower of grass for my food and refreshment,
Lapping the waters for drink and considering possibly sleeping,
Thinking of Eden again; in my study and bleary assessment
Lazily leaning on rock, I attempted a passive discernment
Wondering what I was watching in detail: a flat and, it sounds odd,
Bladed debris ground deep in the rock, with the curve of a serpent,
Hilted it seemed as its long sheath terminates brusque at a round rod,
Tucked in an alcove, a rib at the entrance, for concealment,
Added or lost to the cave, and became one part of its system,
Rusted or ruined and covered in lime-growth, stony congealment,
Lest it be merely a trick of the light, but I know, as with wisdom,
This is a thing placed, not grown out of the bowels of quarries,
Thus I arose and with short steps crossed to it, touching its surface,
Likened to metal and knobbed chalk, gnarled and riddled with stories,
Which I am wont to discover, caressing, discerning its purpose,
When I deciphered it grossly, at once altogether distressing,
Marking a trail of its length with my hand to its plastered foundations,
Recognized that it, despite its location defying all guessing,
Came from accursed Rephaim hands, sure by the faint demarcations
Showing its historied use and its heft, fit well for a giant,
Trapped in the salted and chalked wall melted around its dimensions,
Sickled in shape as was common for Canaanites heaven-defiant,
Curious thus were the etchings for one God only it mentions,
YAH, in so precious of letters as Hebrew I scarcely expected,
Buried amid dull earth to the comfort of audible waters;
Long was it left by a monster who blasphemed, a man who defected,
Servants of holier nation’s defense, or its numerous slaughters,
Frozen in time and in place as a stand-still sun in the distance,
Bringing to mind new questions, of what were the reasonings martial
Bringing it here to repose in its rust, in its tethered existence,
Sleeping in rugged Ein-Gedi, and this is the cause of my marvel,
Thereof among goat-crags, in a sheep-fold midst, an encounter,
Ancient and known well, when Saul came to relieve of a passion,
Cover his feet as is said: and a man of investiture sounder,
David the king, lurked deep in the cave, a soundless assassin
Wielding a blade with a skilled hand, flanked by a mightiest war-band
Crept in the dark with the cover of spring-sprung waters and, adroitly,
Cut from his robe and returned down depths mentioned beforehand,
Then to his greatest, inimit’ble Three, who were equally, choicely,
Verit’bly deeded he said, I am reticent, friends, for transgression:
Saul was anointed by God and I raised to him blade with intention,
Neither shall you, o my company! strike Saul, hence my confession;
Mercy upon me, Lord! and withdrew up cavern ascension,
Leaving behind him, the king called David, the odor of violence,
After a tourney of slaughter, his grieved years numbering twenty,
Staunchly refusing the study of portents as arrogant science,
Choosing instead to believe on the Lord for his lot and his plenty
Which to him counted for righteousness, meriting throne for a nation,
Promised to one of exemplary virtue we venerate dimly,
Thus as his gains were abandoned, his king’s birth-right, to my frustration,
Left in a cave in the sheep-folds hidden, reserving it grimly
Once the Messiah returns and, by true winds, might reassemble
What we have squandered by spirited words of the fallen airous,
Bearing an oil anointing to which all the peoples shall tremble:
Destiny cranks from its end to beginnings, as fixed as Polaris,
Tautened and poised for an agent of God for His quorum pursuant,
Those He elects to the majestied portion, a victory fearful,
Roused to occasion as once had the king of an Israel truant
Glowered at mighty Goliath in riotry, boasting an earful,
Arming his sling to the taunts of the Philistines gravely misheartened,
Casting the stone on its arc of redemption, a vanquishing racket
Setting the giant suplined in the field, near death and unpardoned,
Then with the sword in my hands he delivered his soul to the black Pit
Cloaked in abyssal terrain with a firmament meager and hoary,
This was the damned blood David incurred on his soul as a price paid,
Drinking his violence for decades, until he rescinded the story
Leaving behind this sword and abandoned his king to be twice-weighed,
Weighed by the Lord by Himself; and I speak of the sword I acquired
Which by appearance, location and symbol supplied diagnosis;
Whether I guess or believe wrong, speaking in vain or inspired,
What I was ought was to scour it clean, the successor to Moses
Might be in need of it soon; as for me! to conduct restoration,
Little by little I might be of mind to repair it to posture,
Cutting away rust-sheathe for appearance without variation,
Yea, in my hand, it can rise as the dead and beseeming to prosper,
Such is my calling perchance, to admit to it fitness and polish:
Bearing the armor of kings is a task not taken so lightly
Knowing the prophecies ordering cities and kingdoms demolished
Prior to God’s chose king and his comrades, acknowledged as mighty,
Sealed with anointing, to come; from their presence, I seek their alliance,
Seeing at once all our fatherless miseries need to be chastened:
King, o my king, to unite us our wisdoms, correct us our science,
Modify best our abash’d creeds written in crassitude hastened,
Ending the plights of the poor, reestablishing rights of our borders,
Teaching us precepts in God’s Word, ending all wars in our vict’ry,
Mastering natures uneased, redetermining plentitude orders,
Forging the palace for man-kind, ruling us gently but strictly,
Fusing the children of Adam to one man, like the beginning,
Sinless and multiplied not, and without the interior threshold
Barring with iron the intimate knowing of others by sinning,
Making the one from the many, the many as one as is echoed;
Ending the causes of heart-aches, winters, diseases and famine,
Setting the Law in propriety, needing no penalties fatal,
Stating but one lone statute, to love, as all fain to examine,
Cherished and pleasing to God, as He loved the original Abel
Seeks us with furious heart for a union sublime and redoubled,
While we wait for a time if be needed in parlors of mirrors
Wandering lost in the labyrinths shaped by the ages betroubled,
Lost for a time, but the troth of the Lord for divinity-fearers
Waits on His coming, the lights to be drunk for a final unveiling:
Wherefore I took to the challenge, embracing my new occupation
Purging impurities, combing a laver of waters and railing
Bludgeon upon blow, after and after repeti’ve abrasion,
Till it has nothing remaining of growths, stone-ivies removed thence,
Which as a vigil I kept, and returned in the mornings to follow
Scraping its joints to the cavern until I decided by shrewd sense
That I can pull it, and thus broke free it did, leaving the hollow,
Empty impression it gave to the cave as a lasting remembrance,
After I brought it returning to where I encamped on the mountain,
Scrubbing it thence with a mixture of substances found at the entrance,
Crystalline structures from travertines, water procured from the fountain,
Grit I obtained from the soil and eisel I juried from balsam
Cobbled together a pleasing solution for bronze restoration
Which, as I scabbed and continued to strive for my labors to blossom
Gathering stones and forgoing the pleasure of food’s satiation,
Polished and slowly returned this artifact back to its glory,
Proving with time it was better preserved for a task it intended
Whether it fit my beliefs or contained an alternative story,
Frothed in the truth of the bronze it was struck and it gently presented
Something of purpose or character, history, home, an assignment afar still,
Somewhere engraved on its inner designs, an implicit retention
Ever-ordained for the hands of a wielder with might and no want skill
Weighing about two talents, a beam in a weaver’s possession,
Proving the truculent giant Goliath had owned this
Prior to falling to David the king and beheaded poetic,
Which had fulfilled of the terrible day as had prophesied Moses,
Thrusting the sun from the sky to the valleys unsung and noetic:
Never has anything died in the shade of the garden unfaded,
Save for the souls and the spirits of exiles guilty of leaving;
What inhumane spawn, sired by angels licentious, evaded,
Down to a remnant, the flood as had snuffed out everything breathing?
Tortured existence as this, to be woven from bilious fabrics,
Indolent children of quarrelsome seed, to their greater despondence
Torched from the face of the earth by the king and his militant mav’ricks,
Gaining a name for themselves as the fellers of giants abscondant,
Sharing amongst the companions works from the flooding of heaven,
Bonding the King to the eldest of King Saul, Jonathan tender,
Ratified over Goliath’s remains; understand my expression,
Then, if I keep of his sword up until the anointed pretender
(Not a pretender to good sense) comes with his hosts on a nimbus
Reckoned with God as a judge and an heir, and I might be his servant
Bearing his armor as nameless elect; and although in my thinness
Maybe I ought to recuperate first, might battles emergent
Blow from the east and befall in a moment, and catch me imperfect,
Though for the time as I breathe, I behold it as a boiling stove-pot
Likened from one Jeremiah: if it hails, none worry is worth it,
What is ordained shall be worked, winds cast from the heavens shall blow hot,
Withering viney’rds and drying the mouths of the wadis in season:
Whether I wither as well is concern for the Lord in His mercy,
Sleeping from ancient reserves and apportioned largessed to His reason;
Better I labor in vain, than my God have account of me perversely,
Thus so content with my lot, I shall scrape and shall scratch and shall scour
High up above swale valley reduced to a portraiture verdant,
Palm-tree clusters, the patriarchs like camp-fires, all tower,
Rustling low from afar with a hiss as a coiling serpent,
Guarding the gardens from waste-land mulleins of ficklest leafing
Heralds of Shephelah, watching the bound’ries of sunny and sunless,
Keeping a strict watch over the spring-crop ready for sheafing
Dotting the settlements straddling gulches and watergalls plumbless,
Heightened by heights as surrounded it; still, of its dwellers unworried,
Human and beast who, accustomed to these, were one with its hazard,
Elegant antelopes, icy in gaze, and the hyrax have scurried;
Corpulent quail in the clefts and the numinous hares have all scattered;
Now I suppose, if Ein-Gedi and creatures frolic the hill-sides
Might I be fit to adapt and advance in a treacherous height, too?
Violent, unsettled, but on it the sun in its radiance still shines,
Would I be cleaning a way on a blade for the vengeance I might do
That I insist on a figure of peace to be given from heaven,
Even preparing myself as an object of tactical study,
Must it be, yea, it indeed is a time to abolish oppression,
Sent to deliver the slaves with aspersions prodigious and bloody,
Stained as at wine-press lakes, and a fane opportunity rises,
Thence I behold lone man as a shadow ascending the steep stone,
Ragged and cloaked in his traveler’s garb, in nowise for surprises
Seeing me sharpening bronze, wind-whipped; he addressed in a deep tone,
Peace, but I held to my peace, for I spoke to no person all winter,
Hence for a moment a silence; he offered again in our shared tongue,
Cautiously: Sabbath in peace, a voice that bordered a whimper,
Caught with the sun in his eyes as the razory cold of the air stung,
Watching me scour the sword with intention and possibly homage
Staying a distance abroad, five paces at least on the slope’s height,
Speaking renewed in his brawn, these bandits who keeps us in bondage,
Fixed to their fortress afar, extort us, and forthy to cope right,
Wishing to pay back full all the foxes and scavenging jackals,
Tucked in their holes, we are gathering men from the wilds surrounding.
Hermits and pilgrims and aliens, back with us: taking no shackles,
That we expect to despoil their lot in a mighty confounding;
What art thy pledge, if thou keepest the Sabbath? and thus I responded,
Like I observe from the heights, on ascent from its proximal locus,
Bandits with nothing to lose — or deserters repulsed and unbonded —
Dwelling in treacherous mountains, and witnessing, duly unnoticed,
See! these merry marauders are local, and showing my maimed arm,
Avered, my God has determined, has chosen for me something of vengeance . . .
Which had convinced him such as I held no intent to escape harm,
Even dismembered, I spoke with a firmer, convicted transcendence
That he, without a reply, stared down at the sword and so nodded,
Thinking it strangely, perhaps, for a man in my wanting condition
Eager for combat against wretch blood, nonetheless if he plotted,
Earnestly, even a hermit as this was of useful admission
Since it was only a matter of numbers, increasing the targets,
May it be well, then, that I exact my revenge surreptitious:
Sinew for sinew, a sport I oblige if my weapon is largest;
Call me demented, a daft back-slider, but not unambitious!
Beckoning slightly, the solemn recruiter with earnest demeanor
Took to the path on descent, as to see if, without his assistance,
What I am now — wretch hermit — is not but an impotent gleaner —
Spiting suspicion, I flaunted my hill-goat-likened existence
Beating him down to the base of the mountain by lengthy a margin,
Which, if he lacked good confidence ere, he had ought reconsider;
Whence we departed together in haste to the village and garden,
Gated by palm trees, founded on springs of a water unbitter,
Itching to bloom in the first dull radiance cast by a vern dawn,
Burgeoning bushels concealed in its branches with fervor internal —
Wait to emerge from thy respite! — with great gains sleep had conferred on:
Likened to these was myself, as I woke with the earth from hibernal
Broaching the bound’ries of civilized life with an eager confusion:
That I am different than I was once is a doubtless assurance,
Being a witness to mighty Jerusalem fall to pollution,
Tortured by angels of Hell, lost things in a single occurrence,
Even my garments, and now I am likened to Job in afflictions,
Yet Job even had friends, poor comforters surely, but friends still,
Though he was just; of myself, I have nothing but many convictions:
That, and a sword of immense size; seeing Ein-Gedi in stencil,
Closer than ever, I carried my weapon arranged on my shoulders
Weighing my bare-foot steps on the gravel and soil and sparse grass
Leaving a pattern, a record of what had afrought my beholders,
What had descended the mountain: a ghast or a vision had marched past,
Yea, for a sight, most surely, the residents found unamusing,
Hobb’ling along as their eyes glazed, hands clenched, progeny whimpered
Seeing a man as as accursed as myself in a stint of perusing,
Pouting about as a miser’ble loathsome, a troglodyte limpard,
Carried his burdens and curses along, but their mouths were all silence:
Not one drop of their spittle nor smallest suggestion of hissing
Flew from their lips as the villagers lowered their eyes in compliance,
Lest I depart and their own might venture again and go missing;
Now, thou consider my troubles until now, each execration,
Haggard, my dry mouth heavy with tongue, but unbowed in comportment,
Wresting a residue dignity that I stay as unshaven,
Clothed in reclaimed and decayed skins, fit for a last reinforcement:
Magnified, fearless and quickened in soul with the spirit of David,
Confident that, as we face all the sons of Anak with defiance,
Something as poetry speaks of our same confrontation as fated:
Dripping and flushed in my blood is a prodigal hatred of giants.
dawn at the cave • finding David’s sword
restoring its honor • recruitment to combat bandits
descent into Ein-Gedi • girded for battle