Canticle for the Planetary Paths
XX
And all the host of the heavens shall pine away, and the heavens shall be folded together as a book:
And all their host shall fall down as the leaf falleth from the vine, and from the fig tree.
God is no further from Earth in the face of a terrible sorrow
Neither the paths of the planets displaced by my callous resentment,
Though on the latter I ponder in wandering towards tomorrow
That if the wandering planets above are ordained and dependent,
Fixed in their journeys by God, or if each walks sadly and worried
Traveling aimlessly cross the expanse of the heavens for meaning,
Looping themselves unintention’ly under celest’als unhurried
Lonely as man in his earthly sojourning, and never convening,
Much as I ambled without one place I was welcome or wanting,
Over the course of a few strange months in the fallout of that night
Finding the valley aflame and my wife gone, ev’rything was daunting
Whether ancestral or foreign; the mountains were golden and graphite,
Back in the place I was known in my youth and my fam’ly resided,
Kiriath-jearim, a day of pedestrian travel from Zion,
This was the place I resigned to return for I, having decided,
Romans or bandits, avengers or cold or the claws of a lion
Mattered to naught in the groans of despair as had curdled my spirit;
Soon I approached of the Salt Sea, under the hills of the border
Walking across the remains of the plain-found cities and near it —
Sodom, Gommorrah, Zoar — with the latter in order,
Since I was several thousand a year too late for the others,
Not as I wanted to visit, but surely the sight of destruction,
Destined by God, had so strangely endeared us and made of us brothers,
Only in this: for the sake of resemblance was meant for induction,
Swollen in black were the pits of the plains, twain many a gray welt
Jutting the cursed lands towering dutif’ly, speaking a message,
That the deserters of God were a blotch on the place as the day dwelt,
Simmering cold in the evenings, an earliest sacrificed presage,
That at the time God met with His chosen, the son of Chaldeans,
Cutting the covenant made with the pieces and man’s circumcision
Soon was the fire to rain from the skies on the desolate regions
Smoking the plains with magnificent vengeance and equal precision,
Taking the smote, the anathema sacrifice parlanc’d today still
Should it be spoken of comparing a sin to its measure of measures
Struck by a bolt of implacable flame for the city’s debased will
Seeking the bounty of flesh and its limited, perishing pleasures
Much as I sought and was punished, and thus I remain in a fragment
Such as the city Zoar, and it grew from the age it was orphaned,
Which I was, fearless in mind, indisposed to be counted as stagnant
When by the prayer of Lot it was saved and was double-apportioned,
That I be equally blest! and I, waterless, set to my city,
Fasting the whole way, carefully climbing a path I concocted,
Harrowing clefts and beleaguering plains that lacked any pity
Carving a trail of my own to the wadi I once had co-opted,
Covered in blood but restored, and in a night-time journey I slept not,
Day and a day was before I approached it, the flow of the Kidron:
Tears in my eye from the promise, and that gift, sleep, I had kept not
Seeking its waters refreshing, a wonder I sought like a migrant
Seeking Bethesda, but this was my own in experience deeming,
Not as the stories were told in Jerusalem, angels of churning,
Rather the Kidron, the waters of blood and unusual streaming
Where I was healed by its current the while the city was burning,
Though as the case is so often with certainty, plans and our reason,
While my hunger advanced with my thirst in a close competition
Soon I had found it afar and it flowed not out of its season
Further along from the place I had met it before on my mission,
Leaping upon it I washed in the low, slow flow and lamented
After a minute of drinking and washing the Kidron in due haste,
Neither a miracle came nor a lesser-but-like-it presented;
Huddled in waters beclouded and weak, I had found it a true waste
Left with my wounds: disappointing, but easy to see as expected,
Given I bore those wounds of infernal designs, as an owed curse;
Giving my thanks to the Lord for the drink, and again undetected,
Caref’ly I crept to the next point, knowing my hunger to grow worse:
Kiriath-jearim, a fortress and mark for Jerusalem bound’ry,
Settled by Edomite sons and had few who were proper descendants,
Slowly becoming a station for Aaronite sons, as had found me,
Father and fathers ascending the ladder of priestly attendants
Formed by our lineage, though of its worth I have little to mention
Since I was sinful, as also my fathers, as also our Levites,
Serving ourselves in the flesh and accepting unlawful ascension:
Edom had taken the thrones of our land and Moriah at peak heights,
While we offered continual sacrifice under their blaspheme:
Sadducees, scribes and alike all our brethren elected for service
Kept to a covenant under the pretense of working a vast scheme
Waiting for something to change or to wish a Messiah to surface,
Dripping with dew of Hermon and prepared to restore us to glory,
Glory I learned in the forests and hills I experienced back then,
Swaying to songs on the wind, wood rustled and told me its story
Hidden in leaves; I was eager, I searched for the foxes in black dens,
Yea, I was brave once, young and with fittingly charactered dimension
Summoned by spirited innocence through light copses of grained oak
Thick for the high hill country, their branches in steady suspension
Dripping in beams of the sun from their leaves, like arbory flames stoked,
Hooding my childhood here, but the wood of my youth was unshielded,
Since it had not kept childhood safe here till my returning —
Same with the city, but this I already concluded it yielded,
When I had last been present, no fam’ly I felt I was spurning:
One for my brother, I lost in a way I will pay no attention;
Two for my mother, conceiving us two boys, slowly despairing
After her womb closed, slowly becoming a ghostly contention,
Dying away in her bed as her chores were becoming my bearing;
Three for my father who silent became with the loss of his household,
Leaving his first-born son who remained as a rueful memento,
Changed him in presence to chilling demeanors, he walked and a cloud rolled,
After I buried him, every kindred in cruelest crescendo
Perished thereafter in short a succession, accursed we were seeming,
Vanishing quickly with pressure for one to preserve us by wedding,
Which by my right as redeemer was simple as also my reas’ning,
Nay, my excuse for divorcing, but justice was also abetting
Curse — or if otherwise, means all the same — was a future in making,
Now for the first time since I had risen from death, in returning
Must I confront of it, judgment of God for a lost undertaking,
Then an abundance of blessings on me! and the worst of us burning,
Stolen from She’ol and proffered to Earth to begin on a task yet,
Something commissioned divinely but never completely explained me,
Gathered as fruit of the vine and I, while I moved in my basket
Managed escape from unthinkable presses pigéaging profanely,
Only to wander on roads I was coursed by an angel whose office,
Sacred, has darkened my wilderness path, coal-pebble bedappled
Under a violence of plains, but the choice and the home of the prophets,
National boundaries wolves have disputed and lions have grappled
Met at the entrance of Kiriath-jearim, the road to the mountain;
Having a few coins, tender at least, was enough for a fain stole
Keeping me warm in the evenings I dwelled in the streets by the fountain,
Nobody left in the city I knew, and in fear to remain whole,
Lest two legions befall this place, I was asked to be going,
Seeing a stranger without good ties as a thing of suspicion,
Whether he looked as a Jew, or undressed to confirm to their knowing,
Chances in times as we now lived meant, to continue my mission,
Searching for reasons to walk on the Earth, I was sorely established,
Given my home-town shared me no history, not in a brother,
Not in relations of blood or in bus’ness — I, tetherless, ravished,
Sleeping on stones for my pillow and good things gave to another,
Not by my choice, was beset — and my lines were of any but pleasant
Falling to places so lacking description and null application
What but can men so supplied but respond as the circumstance says it,
Leaving behind mine origins, kept by a stole and a gathered collation,
Onward, denied of my right to a home by arrangement of marriage,
Family goods, an inheritance, Jubilee (Edom denied it),
Fortune or anything: though lest one be disposed to disparage,
Blame or declaim me as Bildad, Zophar and Elpihaz had cried it,
Even today I belonged as a ghost to the grave as consumed me,
Bonded by death and but ransomed by God, and as surety garnered,
Gathered Himself from Gehenna, the flame of perdition and gloomy,
Cursed and unholy, a ghost of the world, and to such as He honored
Tread on my previous life to reserve for Himself my attention:
Nothing as once I had known is remembered, Jerusalem razed down,
Dowry demolished and family thrust to the Pit for retention,
Leaving a trial for me, and I bear this burnished and blazed crown
Whether I need or deserve it, I choose all my God will determine,
Though I am certain His mind of unfath’mable depth and transcendence,
Purposeful always, has partly impressed on me part of my burden,
This I conclude: He has chosen for me — yea, something of vengeance . . .
Blood to be spilled for the Lord, for myself and for Israel struck down,
Though at the moment a target unknown and remaining elusive
Which I am wont to discover and might share what I by luck found,
Given the journey from Kiriath-jearim to elsewhere conducive,
(Given my circumstance) which I expect to have time to be consider:
Knowing for blame to be placed on the Gentiles turns from the Scripture,
Persia, Assyria, Babylon each had received as transmitters,
Angels of justice the right to destroy God’s portion with stricture,
Blessed for a time and consigned to His wrath at a date to determine,
Though in His mercy He strikes down armies, He also will chasten,
Leaving His people to suffer, and thus with the Romans is certain,
God has a purpose for them, for their reign in our portion is nascent,
That it is judgment on Jacob, the east wind blows and it blows hot
Should God choose this time as an era their will be endemic;
That I am sure, so I seek it – revenge – on another I know not,
Clinging to heart expectations without a regard for polemic
Easily found in the pride of the circumcised man in sojourning,
Seeking a fight to assert to the witness of nations his person,
Will and misplaced strength; nay, I respect that Earth in its turning
Seems to be likened to festivals, some celebrated exertion,
Where I am begged to depart but I know celebrations continue,
Only shaming myself in refusing, and knowing it sinful
Taking a wife who I issued divorce was a wrong and akin to,
Possibly worse, if I ravished by force of a woman provincial;
Truthfully, rain-clouds fly to their place by the breast of a night sky
Never again in the same way, neither the waves, nor the sun does,
Yet we persist in the telling so mournful, misleading a white lie:
Things can return in precisely the way as it formerly once was;
Proven again in the wood not once this foreign to wander,
That I was some unaccompanied stranger with flickering candle
Not as a native to Kiriath-jearim, and something to ponder
That from the forest itself, man carves for the ax of its handle,
Leans it against what trees he intends to remove for a trestle,
Turning the wood God grew in its gold-green glory to drudg’ry,
Which is his calling, to ruin it; hewing the wonder at Bethel
Dragging it down to its lowest foundations — o God, if Thou judge me,
Yea, I believe, I believe, I believe, and I said I believe it,
Maybe I love with my heart, with my soul, with my strength, with my mind, see:
Total is this I will give, and I lost it but nobody grieves it,
Teach me Thy Way for I struggle to seek it, I fix it to find Thee
Calling from sweeping a wilderness, crying to Thee from my trouble
Skirting the wood of my youth in a stole, I am cold; I am meager,
Lapping the dew of the leaves, I consume grain-heads with a struggle
Gleaning the pastures unripe, with an anger becoming beleaguered
Till it has softened to weary expression, a trite disappointment,
Chewing with half of a toothed mouth, though I too weakened for weeping,
Knowing as well I am far too unfit to expect an employment,
Given my maimed state, this is enough: gloom-fed I am keeping,
That in the last place where I had kept to shivah and the thirty,
Now I was not clear whether to mourn for Hadassah as missing,
That I oblige to dismember my stole or my coverings dirty
Since she had naught for a burial — Lord, I be not for dismissing:
God has forgotten me not, but He seemed from below so dismissive,
Silently watching me roam in the seasons with nothing adductive,
That was until I was beaten by bandits to make me submissive,
Giving my stole to their hands; so for coin I had need be productive
That I can purchase another, and then I remembered the Salt Sea,
Lousy with bitumen, teeming with pitch, and I knew from my time there
Where it was plentiful, where it was frequently taken and paltry,
Even if work was a dangerous drudgery, seeking a fine wear,
Desperate then I admit to be saved from the night and its chilling,
Hence I proceeded to walk to the Salt Sea, whence I was hailing,
Searching the coasts for the once-seen pools of the bitumen filling,
Thence I had started to wallk: but by evening my energy, failing,
Brought me to rest near hills on the cusp of a village for fishing,
Guarded by hastily-founded a tower of boulders and wet brick;
This was enough to dissuade my approaching, in spite of my wishing,
That I be seen as intruder or bandit — ironic, poetic,
Since I was here on account of the two — nevertheless I am resting,
Sitting awhile in thought, and I re’lize I musn’t be going,
That in procuring the bitumen, challenge enough in divesting,
Who is the purchasing party? offhandedly, not to my knowing:
Might I encumber myself with the pitch for a season of waiting,
Till I be perished in cold? or again to be robbed of possessions,
Even if then I survive with the goods, with the one I am trading,
Where will it head but on heads of the innocent, added transgressions
Given the war I am wont to expect to continue in earnest,
That I supply Rome, bandit or both with a means to enable;
Lest I ignore this fact and I add to the evil I serviced
Here I will stay, for to die pure trumps life bought in betrayal,
Pondering dreadful a truth: we are only as meet as our vessel,
Only as good as the instruments God vouch-safed in our making,
Then as it withers to time or, as Israel lost in his wrestle,
Injuries broached, we endure to the end unto She’ol partaking,
Taking along naught, what I received on the day I was born dead:
Burial cloth and a body, an omer of flesh and its wrappings;
Bare-foot, bloodied by cantles of rock and occasionally thorn-bed,
Scourged and deprived, I am ochre among loam-substrated saplings;
Labor as Levite, with temple to serve, was duly constructive,
Thus in its absence, am divested of much but the guile of lucre,
Either as thief or as vagrant, a reasoning simply abductive,
Since I have nothing to offer in limbless condition and suture,
Capable not, for I neither possessed of the requisite talents
Skill or in capital, left to meander the narrow defiles
Tinseling mountain ascents, and as Job had complained of the balance
God has bestowed good men and the evil, I lived from the piles
Burned in Gehenna, but died on a penance; the temper’ture dropping,
This was afar from the nights I was living in garden and hedgerow:
Fain for a moment, but now I was paralyzed, hopelessly stopping,
Left with no options but begging, for what am I worth? as I said so,
Aaronite work was no practical labor, however exalted,
Even the labor of masons and servants had greatly surpassed it:
Though I was able to work for my profit in valley unsalted
What am I worth? if I tend to be quite periphrastic,
Work in my state is the slower and worse by the wounds I sustain still,
Harshened by such unendurable thirst and, with nothing to slake it,
Weakly I ground to a shuffle, exhausted, continued to wane till,
Ruthful as when I was born of my mother and almost as naked,
Happened upon some settlement — people were moving as shadows —
Hearing a flute from their quieting tents of familiar rhythm,
Crouched I by broom-trees, thinking of change, and of settling black woes,
Cried I aloud up to God, croaking; the one thing I could give Him.
the Kidron healed not twice • Kiriath-jearim welcomed me not
no family nor future known • robbed of my clothing
neither can I earn wages • a groan up to heaven