Canticle of the Myrtle Leaves
XV
I saw thee, my lord, as an angel of God,
And my heart was troubled for fear of thy majesty.
That I could stop and be frozen eternally here in my stark prose,
Having completed my journey, at once stop cold and be finished,
Spaces replace words, furrows of memories languish as dark rows,
Leaving the rest on the table unwritten with nothing diminished,
Caught in the blanks and the silence of endings with nothing remaining,
Left as a husband to wife in repetitive days till we pass on,
Here in our home, on our land, in our respite forever sustaining,
Mired in comfort, entrenched in repose for all futures and pasts gone;
Ere I continue in kind, I was sharing in bread by a fresh dawn,
Covered in rain and in safety of home, by the warmth of a fire,
Speaking on various things, past things and the meanings impressed on,
Ere we begin in our song, as Hadassah began to inquire:
This is the wonder enrapturing me, in thy present condition,
Whether the worth to believe in the joys of the present diminished,
Raising the dead, for repentance – but songs of recounted rendition,
Resting on Sabbaths and feast days kept are always unfinished,
Part of traditions in ever-remembrance of deeds of our hist’ry,
Mighty indeed! but has God interceded for naught for our nation,
That we, to sing of our Lord in memorial, hope in His myst’ry,
Even as now He will raise from the dead and without explanation;
Thus I responded, I pondered and found not worthy of grieving;
This is my life now, then I began to explain: my revival,
Knowing of this, and I still have a hard time fully believing
Must it be God all alone has ordained my continued survival,
Even for me, as I humbly bestrode in the latest of summer
Knowing the truth in its stubborn and bare face, then in admission,
Hard to believe in, what I observed, seas rendered asunder,
God’s great heavens, His heavenly foot-stool, left in concision,
This was enough to convey my belief, I am sure, as required,
Leaving the lingering silence to speak for itself; she responded,
Such is the burden of miracles, witness to glory inspired,
Though I am certain of this, it is fitting belief has absconded,
Lest we are beasts who believe by the senses and not by a keen wit
That as the Lord has endowed to the children of men in resemblance
Acts as a grace and a debt; this much as I know and have seen it,
What can be trusted in faculties’ breadth in the mind, by remembrance,
Make us unique, to be held to account for our deeds by our species,
That we account for our actions with tales and returned indication,
Save our repentance, a deed we subject to no theories nor theses
Which it alone has sufficiently meaningful self-explanation;
Happy are men in their changing of heart! as thy heart, I imagine,
Duly secures this good, in no longer requ’ring accounting,
Only the sign of his blooming dissuasion from sin to compassion;
Much we endured but we neither have need nor intent in recounting,
After our sorrows, we live and we love in abundance of lights free
When we remember the locus of thought is the quiet of hearts’ depth,
Not in the noise of the mind, nor the fragrance alluring of “might-be”
Nestled unspoken in all, up until each wanes and departs breath;
Walking the path of the truth leads here: we are these obligations,
These we have owed to our elders, our off-spring, friends and our tribe thus,
Not as we please to affect these things by our own machinations,
Neither the wishes for change to the curtain of suns or the tide’s truss,
Therefor the making of Israel makes sense, that we are witness,
Kindred to Sons of the Most High, carrying what He created,
Still! we are tested as ev’ry tradition is tested for fitness
Worthy to bear in our flesh, on our hearts a perfection truncated
Mirroring heaven in simple a way, and the promise unbroken;
Prophets have struck by the tools of the tongue on the forge of oration
Further revisions for God to respect all the good He has spoken:
That He will dwell in our midst, and begin to restore us our nation,
Punish the enemies seeking our people in endless destruction;
Lo, and alas! mourn, mourn, for the truth is between the betwixt thus,
Broken a thing is forever a broken of things, His construction,
Shall be a shadow but never again! so for once He has fixed us,
Fixed we may be, but we ring with the hollow of bells with a cracked side . . .
Ask of a widow who never was granted redemption or child,
Ask of the man who has sinned and repented with onus to back-slide,
Ask of the bride who was taken and later avenged, but defiled,
Ask of the son who has lost of his nation to foreign arrivals,
Ask of the daughter departing the home of her father forever,
Both in returning to Israel after their various trials
See in the shrug of the hills an indifferent spirit untethered,
Spirit of soundless surmising and scoffing, o spirit absconding
Speaks in a hushed voice haunted and husk, as a revenant might call,
Innocence slain and its traitor replaces its role in responding,
Standing in place stands coldness and evil cascading with night-fall
Proving the bare fact things as had once been never recover,
Things as had once been shed, and if seasons return to the former,
What had transpired is gone and the spring does not rediscover
What in the winter has died, as the mornings have come to be warmer
Much has transformed, and too much has transformed to be what has unraveled,
Woods we adored as a child remain in deliberate image;
Still, we cannot be revisiting youth in the wood we had traveled,
This is my grief for us, more for our nation and every village,
What we expect from the promise of futures is never so blatant,
Both the prepared and the worried have ev’ry desire averted:
David no longer has heirs on the throne for the promise is latent,
Israel once was the shelter of God but is hereby deserted,
God is assuredly keeping His word to His people in one way,
Not as we think or can see or we want, for to God it is foreign;
Surely the people we know for our kin will be put back someday,
Not in a clear way, not on a mere day, neither implored when,
Only as far as the Lord has esteemed for His truth and applied use —
What a resplendent and grim expectation to hold for the nation —
Cavalry come, and upon all the fairest of horses they ride, loose,
Sent from the wrath of an angry and just God’s swept conflagration,
Rendering ruin from cities, a wilderness now for the vultures,
Laid to the dust it was made, as all things be undone by undoing,
Treasures in temples the spoil and plunder of savagest cultures;
Even if built by our children again in a future ensuing,
What is the promise fulfilled? for our age is afflicted, defeated,
Bled on the altar of eras, a quake in the story of kingdoms,
Rendered alone as a word in the records our children succeeded
Meant to be only a tale to beware by the minstrel who sings them,
Alien people resembling nothing, a flash in the darkness,
Darker than parchment, to wit, on the shadow of histories rendered,
Such is the woe of a tragedy, cleverest prose at its sharpest,
Far from today, it has all but the feeling of pity engendered
Since it was ours who disturbed peace, each of us weakly complicit,
Dull to the senseless conspiracy wrought to destroy of their anchor,
Tether to child’s inheritance, thus to our moment elicit
Stole from my lips a respectful but firm indication of anger,
Rather than heritage land and a vintage for crop as desired,
Earned, or expected, we gift great hardship instead as a dowry
Stored for the marriage of young dreams sought by descendants sired
Toward the will to enact with ferocity guarded devoutly;
This expectation has helped to avoid my despair for our lacking,
That is of children, so neither of us will be guilted, dejected,
Leaving behind desolation, so neither a son for attacking
Not for enslavement, nor daughter for capture and else as expected
Comes by our blood, so we perish with blood not spilled in the dirt-plains,
Such is a comfort for childless women, bespared in a worse way,
Looking on cruel red-violet at dusk, known these as the birth pains
Washing upon shores Stygian, bled by the black of a terse day,
When we are punished by God, it arrives by a perilous famine,
Pestilence, drought, and the rest, but the worst by the hand of invasion;
Nothing so total as violent incursion and plunder deserts in our canon,
Men slain, women defiled and children enslaved on occasion,
This is the truth as I once understood, and cementing the story,
After thou left it was always my thought, of the evil of good men,
That I had nothing to offer again, and the hope to restore me,
Resting with God, came not, and I knew that nobody should, then,
Strokes for a hope dashed, strokes for my weeping, and strokes for the closing,
That is, the knowing for certain I never would care for a child,
Flesh of my flesh, as I wanted, no man had his mind on proposing,
Neither a bed to be shared, nor a moment again where I smiled,
Futures as seen from the lowest of valleys were nothing to live for,
Not as I longed for thy presence, but all thou hast promised extinguished,
Made of the days I would see small pittance, to wish it had been more,
Only remained but a moment, I chose a composure distinguished,
Trusting for now in the God of my fathers who knows how I suffered,
Seen me distressed and has known of my groans since the pangs of my mother,
That I despair is forgetful, in time I recovered
After and after a struggle on Earth, one follows another,
Even to worry is weary, for mine and my wants are the same thing,
Fantasies both, as the face of desire is tailed by a worry,
Wishes on heaven are heavier thoughts, through an anxious declaiming
Chanted in raptured fixation to dead time, begging to hurry;
This is my soul, my fixations, attention, my eyes I have lifted,
What I am now is my going-direction; pursuing, my spirit;
Thoughts may arrive but are not of myself, as I thought I have drifted,
Choice is a moment of soul, and reflection attempts to be near it;
Coming to know of my soul in an intimate way in reflection,
God has responded in kind with a grace I considered as fair loss:
Peace, and a peace I will know all the greater in light recollection
After I pass from the shadow of Earth and my life is unsnared, lost;
Peace is the final reward, and my life-long longing was just this;
Still on my own I was lost, but the Lord of the universe goodness:
Goodness in the spirit is faith; in the intellect, reason and justice;
Only in spirit was goodness in me, and diminutive, rootless;
God saw this and had cause for my life to continue with favor,
There and thereon, God hovered upon my allotment of day-breaks,
Giving abundantly peace for my spiritual soil to savor
Growing a faith I was meant to possess and the struggles His way takes;
This is my hope for thy soul, as the Lord has redeemed of my scorning;
Now as for thee, He will shine and in me grant His mercy forever
Lain on the grass of thy fields as I wept as the dew of the morning,
That I was always redeemed, and for thee, we be bundled together.
Hearing Hadassah with such a belief, I was taken with sadness,
Not in defense but in pure resignation for all I was shamed for,
Similar, still, as the Lord had exchanged of my sorrow for gladness
After He rendered my body in twain, and He ought have distrained more,
What I had done, I contended, was evil and worth explanation:
Save for the time in the desert, I came to reflect on repentance
Lest it were granted as grace by my God for a mortified station,
That He will comfort despairing, for them He has given His presence;
Having exacted a will of obedience toward the earthliest passions,
God saw this and had cause for my life to continue with favor;
Happy are men in their changing of heart! as my heart, thou imagined,
Grants soporific a lullaby, nothing remaining to aver
Speaks to the truth of thyself, in the manner of good represented
Saying indeed, it is this we had searched for the day in December,
God has allowed dead men resurrection, and always intended,
Built by the grace of the Lord for us married, and still, I remember,
Toward the twilight, rays of a radiant glare had retracted
Something of wherefore its purpose displays not,sun so ensplendored,
What in the stars are the signs of the days as foretold; she reacted,
Live as thou speak, and be spoken to equally, brutally rendered,
What is it worth to acknowledge thy faults and be menaced to penance,
Only to bear its cudgel and speak with impulsive assumption?
That I observe in thy stringing of letters in sentence
Not of desserts worth, merely presumption;
Neither I deal in thy tender nor care for comparisons reaching,
Either accept of the mercy I leisured, without contradiction,
Else have the manful awareness to gain-say what I am speeching,
Not as thou hast to direct of my braid to another conviction;
Live as thou speak, and be spoken to equally what thou engendered,
Riding on passions Hadassah rebuked, but for one I deserved it,
Two, I was guilty of worse, and she mildly made it remembered,
That for my faith I was haunted, and for some time that I reserved it,
Bidden with near-strikes sought for my life and I mummered a coward
Over the salt of a black hell-scape two places were ground in,
Sodom — Gomorroah — to evil a triplicate glory had towered,
Coming with judgments in seal of divine word graft for the towns twin,
Showing in terrible justice as God broke forth of the high truss
Firming the gulf of the heavens and Earth with a fire of trial,
Making the reason He tasked for the hosts of His angels to spy us,
Found in the righteous as pertinent fear and the sinners, denial:
All of it matters, the smallest the most, as it does for the Most High,
Thus, if the Lord had unbelief in one overcoming the testing,
Flesh can endure but the soul is so brittle, the blood drains, ghosts die,
Piece by avowed piece — cutting me off with presumption arresting,
Thus she responded, if God deigned man’s understanding,
Neither would Eve roam garden alone nor the man be impeached, as
Since he’d had never desired a helper nor expanding,
Seeking the shadow of God’s wings always in silent retreat, as
Satisfied then as eternally placed in his peace and his purpose,
Such be the case, as it might, I was earnest in further replying
That I be interested less in supplying defense of the worthless,
Rather I gather ostensive remarks made worthy of plying:
Shadowed in autumn before rain pelts Earth thirsting in silence,
Abel, the taunting my name has renewed, and in sacrifice fleeting,
Treading my monologue, God had permitted a demon his violence,
This I had fled with the heart of a coward, a spirit retreating;
After the thing has transpired, a sly and unseen infiltration,
Filling the fields of my soul with its tares and invasive temptation:
What is the heart but misguided, affection but obligation,
Love but arrest, and the passions but suffering? spoke in mentation;
Little deserved was my long speech, meaning to not disappoint her —
Now she had stirred, rose fast in reply and a groan of admonition,
Rising with rile, shattered the silence and gave the rejoinder,
Speaking so much, hear and be able to now understand my commission:
Stop, and no longer regale me of demons and stories of spirit,
Evil has come by the hands of Assyrians, Babylon, others;
Shining magnificent hosts in the stars, I am neither to fear it:
Man is his worst foe, slain all the more by his turbulent brothers
Next to the demons of deserts who have broken thy body in anger,
Barely compare to the things I have suffered in kind, thy intention;
Falling to Earth, so the angels were bound to but follow the stranger:
Man had but shown on the Earth no example but wicked dimension,
Even the creatures our God had designed were as rivers in plot course,
Five days bounty of good and a fragment of one was pernicious,
That for malevolent angels, who rouged with persuasion but not force,
Man had invented his own blotch, tractable violence so vicious,
Earth was beshook with his need to destroy of another, the weaker;
God had to order the dry land drowned for his utter depravement,
That he consented to bondage himself in an order the bleaker:
Pitiful man took captive the whole of the Earth in enslavement.
rain falls and the work is done • Hadassah asks about faith
the evils she suffered • her devotion to the Lord
an ill-advised response • her rebuke