Canticle for the First Rains
XIV
And you shall remember your wicked ways, and your doings that were not good:
And your iniquities, and your wicked deeds shall displease you.
What I have done to the widow requires a difficult story,
Certain to poorly depict of my character terrible lessons
Even if flushed with the color of days past, faded and hoary,
Such is the case of my sin, and I reckon of deepest confessions;
Kiriath-jearim I knew as my residence when I was younger,
Coming from prominence, finding my fathers in chronicles written;
Soon I was grown, and am faulted for entering youth with a hunger,
Suffering deeply in youth’s red iron, and primed to be smitten
That with an eye as my ancestor Jacob had followed to folly
Watched with intentions impure all the women Judea had sired,
Creeping within, lust fostered displeasure as bristling holly,
Thus I had sought in my youth of a wife to partake as desired;
None had aroused in my spirit the full satisfaction I wanted –
Young and inflamed, I was frequent with mistresses found in the city,
Zion, defiled the name of the City of David undaunted,
Even the Seder I carried in silver for courtesans pretty,
This in itself is enough for confession, but further I dredge err,
Taken by force with appearance and form were the throes of a strayed soul,
Once and again I encountered a woman I claimed to be pledged fair
Never respecting the word for a husband and wife to be made whole
Stealing the purity given to daughters of men as their treasure –
Up and until I had worked in the temple at thirty, I lived such;
Then I received from my home-town word of my greatest displeasure,
That of a marriage undone, as the father had promised to give much,
Much for my family name in his land, sole heir to a fortune,
Given as dowry for marriage, inheritance south of the Salt Sea;
After he perished, his daughter’s betrothed had inspected his portion,
Only to perish as well, and an elder determined to call me,
Seeking to offer the levirate rights as my own or another:
This I initially thought to reject, but I soon reconsidered
Once I had met with the widow the following month to discover
Shrouded in hair to the floor, and as dark as the sun in a blizzard,
Glossy and fine, so no brush was required to care for its style –
Covered – but surely a marvel for those with she chose to retire
Baleful of gaze, as her eyes had a crimson description and wile,
Now I can speak to her form as a smokeless reflection of fire,
Nothing beyond, as to mention the measure of flesh is abhorrent,
Thinking the same as I thought in the days I accepted the proffer;
After betrothal, we wed in the midst of a week-long torrent,
Signaling first for our marriage its fruits of our sorrows in proper;
These were the only collection of fruits we can claim to have gathered,
Barren of children, we prospered alone on the property given,
Years had transpired until I was yearning to reap as I scattered,
Thus I approached in Jerusalem elders, for us to be riven,
Thus I returned with a purse of my family silver as payment,
Leaving her stranded and aged in the valley I later returned to,
Last I remember her weeping, uncovered and tearing her raiment
Begging for peace and forgiveness, to trust in the Lord, as she yearned, too,
God to deliver the promise of children; I hardened my cold heart,
Feeling a treacherous man in ignoring the plight of my wife’s pleads,
Running with tears and the rest, I had tried to forget of our bold start,
Now on her face, in my soul, in the blending of flesh and our life’s deeds,
Brings to the fore chilled memories locked in my spirit so tightly,
Rising in flood with the first rains fresh with the season unfolding,
Sun in the clouds, shine yonder and cast down light so she might see —
Even thy name seemed worthy of forgetting; our union, withholding;
Still, I remember, Hadassah . . . I dug of the well in the first rain –
Simple, I thought, to begin as the soil was damp and conducive –
When I had slipped on the slick dirt, then overcome with the worst pain,
Thou hast remarked it was poorly advised, but it seemed inconclusive;
Right as thou wert, it was never a point to be made or reminded,
Silent and nurturing, thou hast attended my needs for a while,
Helping my poorest condition so that all my needs were provided,
Love as it always had been, and a love I can never revile,
Still, I remember in summer, awakened at night in the dead heat,
Speaking in soft, hushed tones to each other of every dull thing,
Waiting for some cool breezes, perspir’ng in kors on our bed sheet,
Passing in reference thoughts on the harvest and season for culling —
Love has a quality very peculiar, ever-exciting,
Changing the dull to the precious, the precious arising to great height
Things I forget on my own I remember with vivid delighting
Catching the memories floating by words struck still in a spate night;
Still, I remember another, a night I avoid disinterring,
Foul were insults exchanged and I saddled my donkey for else-where
Only to bid for a peace, and she smiled with faint tears stirring,
Thankful I suddenly changed, for as angered or bitter our welfare,
Love has a quality very peculiar, ever-exciting,
Changing the blood and transforming the body, possessed by another,
Branded for bondage, the flesh as a tablet and covered in writing
Written iniquities, friends, God, fears and the name of our lover,
Still, I remember a cold day past in the dread of the harvest,
Thuds of the rain through the lattice, I stood at the entrance with fervor,
Tossing of stones to the garden, we vied who can throw it the farthest,
Landed a stone undetermined, and lacking another observer,
Neither we dared in a chilled, rained autumn to check where it landed,
Thus we accepted it lost and continued, so passing it over,
That was until the supply was depleted, the last stone handed,
Victory fell at my feet as a stone, and I turned to console her,
Even in this, she refused, and demanded to see of the thrown stone,
Far as it landed, no victor was I as until we had found it,
Such was the game we created, competing in even our own home,
Ran in the down-pour toward the garden and searching around it,
Eager in kind, with ambitions opposed, by a heavy and dull rain,
Till I had come to conclude it was gone and elated, she puffed up
Holding a small thing, small as the stone, as if more than a null gain
Over her husband, within her a turbulent mischief had sprung up,
Finding a stone for her hands, so presented as though it were pointed,
Saying indeed, it is this we had searched for the day in December,
Greater absurdity, time or condition, the greater disjointed,
Made it the more great, snide as she meant it, and still, I remember
Traveling far from our valley for some obligation or other,
Dwelling by tent in a sheer rock canyon or open encampment
Telling me things, how she always had dreamed of becoming a mother,
Tasting the sweet was so bitter, regretting I ever abandoned,
Ever considered the thought of betraying a woman I needed,
Sinking in sand in the dark of a cruel, obsidian-black night
Fashioned a grave by the careful belief love swept and retreated
Leaving bereft of a soul her relief as it turned to a back-bite,
Faith was a foolish conviction and hope an embarrassing error,
Love was a tragedy, acts it had caused were a debt for remittance,
Nothing was something and all was for nothing, as many declared her;
Living alone has its beauty, but wasted on scoffing resistance,
Knowledge possesses the quality, leading a cynical scoffers
After idealism leaves with the brutal distress we discover
After a hard time, only with knowledge left in our coffers,
Using its tender as though it’s accepted by every other;
Made all the worse in the dread of a soundless repose and its mire,
Sunk with a woman I feared in the bed of our silent connection,
Rather, unspoken disquiet, the bound’ry we draw on the bed we retire,
Severed but sharing a night and a pregnant but senseless abjection,
Neither had courage to turn back, silence no longer requited —
Having rebuked or refused to discuss it before with a hatred,
Hatred deserved not, neither it meant — and its strangeness admitted,
Ask of the matter at hand, for the sake of the distance abated,
Brought to the fore this cicatrized wound, and disturbed it in healing;
Pitiful cry of a man was my question, but brave was the action,
That as I asked, she had sighed but at last she related her feeling,
Feeling alone, as if seeking the int’rests unique to her faction,
Not for our family bringing her shame all despite the apparent,
Both of us wanted the same thing, even if mine was so quiet,
Bound in uncertain eternity toward paternity errant;
This was the weakness, and here in the moment I failed to deny it,
That I had known in myself I was hardly sufficient as father,
Neither a man nor provider enough, but I heard in her quaver,
Yearning and small, opportunity’s thread, and I, pulling it farther,
Held on the thread for our tenure together for chance I could favor,
When I was grasped in my lust to depart from my wife for the city,
Reasoning thus, as I wont to have done, as we lived an enjoined curse,
Barrenness shared was a cause of unfathomed and multiplied pity,
This she was bound, but she might well opt to be granted a coin-purse,
Breaking the bondage of one, of my own, and become as a freed-man,
Lifted from sufferings that as I might be condemned be unfettered,
Granting a liberty used to exhaust all the deeds I indeed planned,
This as contrived a decision I managed as one so unlettered;
Still, I remember the guilt of my sins in a shadowy chamber
Under the spell of a prurient woman in Israel’s red gloam,
Counting the pool of her flesh I emerged with the toil of labor,
Feeling a filth in the flesh, and an urgent desire to head home;
Still, I remember the loss and its reticent burn for my life-long,
One God gives to a young man, that he acquaint with it early,
Hardly forgetting the loss for a young man doing his wife wrong,
Terribly under its shadow he walks, not walking so surely,
Learning a valu’ble lesson of good, it is fragile and smoke-thin,
Good is so strong, but in hands of a young man dissipates briskly;
Shaken awake, I observe in the foreign a life I awoke in:
Drunk on my fear, I decided until, in avoiding the risky,
Sleep was removed from my eyes and I saw in the morning a late shame:
Nothing required to bask in commitment to love and its white glow,
Nothing remained but the spoils of fear, great nothings from a great game;
Still, I remember the wicked endowment I felt and thou might know:
Severed from blood, I had taken inheritance meant for the widow,
Leaving itinerant one I had loved, to the corners of gust-fields;
Thus I relieved in returning and seeing her gaze from her window,
Knowing her spirit enough to refuse to accept an unjust deal,
Living defiantly here in the valley her name, and I knew it,
Knowing of this, and I still had a hard time fully believing
What I had done to Hadassah was right, and no gall to pursue it,
This I had fled with the heart of a coward, a spirit retreating
Folded upon of itself with tenacious iniquities bound in,
Dead to myself and to God, who had granted a grace for my sorrow,
That I forgot not what I had done in the grave I was found in,
Shivering still from the past who had vengeance to levy tomorrow,
Always remembering soft lies told for my pride and my glory,
Slipping from everything I had known good, known to my favor,
Fragments untoward were sifted from tellings I held for my story,
Grants soporific a lullaby, nothing remaining to aver . . .
These I forgot, as explained in proclivities spoke in confession,
What I explained and had taken of notice condemns my condition,
Shown in reducing the widow as object for lustful obsession,
Not the companion I knew, but observed from the depths of my prison
Recognized here, I allowed lust quarter for subtle seceding –
Even today, I have sinned in acknowledging first of her figure,
Not of the goodness she wrought in her life, as with me and preceding,
That in my weakness, my mind of depravity boiled in vigor
Natheless my crime, in determining whence I had left for a reason,
Blaming her barren endowment, neglecting my greater indiff’rence
Toward the fact, and instead I continued in terrible treason
Swayed by the flights of the passions who might still rule my existence,
That I refuse to abide in the lust, not granting it parley,
This is the means for a soul to recover, and precious a curse wanes . . .
After returning to thunder with colt and a ration of barley,
Spir’tual first rains came in my mind with the physical first rains,
Beating upon starved earth in a dark sun, witness to fell rain,
Soaked to my guts, I was tying the colt to the post by the pull-gate,
Watched from the house by the widow, who once was my wife, my suzerain,
Saying a word as I moved to unload crop, heaving its full weight:
Look, as the windows of heaven have opened, I open my door, see:
Come and repose in the warmth in the work of thy hands, and she smiled,
Saying in turn, and do not lose heart, I have yet to restore thee,
Not as I might wish either, I merely have pity awhile,
Though I objected, remiss if I failed in demanding to see of the thrown stone,
Far as it landed, instruction I deemed in the terms I remember,
Then she remarked, where this first stone fell, I and certainly none know,
Might we compete in again and I win by thy lacking in members,
Thus I, persuaded, accepted the offer, and after I finished,
Followed her lead and ignited a fire to warm us the evening;
Here I am culpable, led by my passions and virtues diminished,
Otherwise finally filling my duty I fled by my leaving,
Husband and wife were apart, and together at last by the dawn-light —
Triumph ignoring the freedom afforded by death for our promise
Knowing again of the other, and cinched in the dark we have drawn tight,
Flooding each other as waves of a dark cove coming upon us —
This was my fear, to have taken again with Hadassah in lust throe,
Love we but shared, and have given permission for evil to prosper;
Lest I was raised from the dead and had gone where I must go
Back to my wife, to Hadassah, with greater a care I can foster
Made it a feasible thing to imagine in images wordless:
Fragments of lives were permitted to mend by our union of bones, blood,
Made by the Lord for the other, and all was again with a purpose
Blended in spirit and carnal expression, a flickering rose-bud,
Blooming in evening with kiss-rich flavor eluding expression,
Saccharine after a while but mostly a satisfied savor;
This was the danger, to know it is greater than flesh in dimension,
Right in intention but stolen in ev’ry advantage to save her,
Safe from my own dear suff’rings I shape by beneficent malice —
This contradiction as much as I know to explain my intention,
What effects as regarded within the celestial palace
Never have entered my mind in the process of doing in mention —
Save for the time in the desert I came to reflect on repentance,
Such was the sorrow of man as a grace from above to enshriven
Weak of a man, as I know I am weak, but enough for acceptance,
Man of a man with his daughter of Israel, taken or given,
Nothing prepared me to find by returning if time were to change her;
Worry was still, as I pondered and found not worthy of grieving
Whether it lust or becoming of love I had entered her chamber,
This was my wanting to chance it; and still, I remember believing,
Knowing before I imagined an evil had ruled, or the good sinned,
Here I had known I was wrong, in a memory thus I regarded:
Having awakened to faintly described notes blown from a wood-wind,
Hazily grasping Hadassah was playing a flute in the garden:
This was a fresh skill gained in my absence, and held my attention
Raising the dawn with her melody glorious, this far-tossed tone;
Knowing she grew as a flowering myrtle, with hope for redemption,
Burgeoned a new guilt under excitement of finding a lost stone —
What I had done to Hadassah was evil and worth explanation
Killing the memories good, and permitting the terrible ember
Lighted by fire of Hell to replace an endowed conflagration
Built by the grace of the Lord for us married, and still, I remember.
recounting the sins against the widow • caught in the depths of lust
inheriting her land • remembering a contest with stones
invited into her home again as husband • hearing her play the flute