Canticle for Ein Gedi
XXI
He was driven away from among men,
And did eat grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven:
Till his hairs grew like the feathers of eagles, and his nails like birds’ claws.
Chortling crows were abound in the clefts by the Spring of the Goat-kid:
This is Ein-Gedi on cusp of the spring and my respite a while,
Watered by underground swells; for a drink I was easily goaded,
Making a temp’rary residence out on a further defile,
Out of the sight of the natives who otherwise might be suspicious,
Seeing a stranger displaced by the war as a fugitive rebel,
Though in my meager condition, I looked not proper malicious,
Rather a beggar or victim and harmless enough to let settle,
Which I was wont to accept, and today I describe as was normal,
Greeted by birds who awaited my death, I awoke with a dry mouth
Resting on bedding I gathered, a mat in arrangement informal,
Slotted upon a nook with the look of a tomb; I arise out,
Leaving the mat in the sepulcher-surface and strode to the light-beam
Cast by a dawn-sun filtering down to the base of the narrows,
Opening out in a bell into darkness, and much as a trireme,
Sounded with eerie a groan from the movement of breezes as arrows
Darting the length of the corridor carved in the canyon emerging,
Exiting toward the same destination as where I am going,
Toward the west side, sloped on descents of escarpments converging,
Where I followed a ridge in the heights to the odious crowing;
Making my way on the rail-thin cliff to the spring I discovered,
Slow but of soft-freshwater to rid of the thirst I was bearing,
After a short walk (only a moment), for what I had suffered,
Finding a blessing as this is sufficient to keep from despairing,
Given my current condition; the spring-head lies at the summit,
Partially shaded and spilling with sun-shine, making it clearer,
Open on three sides, gaping and making it easy to plummet;
Crouching, I lapped at the water, and using the pool as a mirror
Glimpsed at myself on the surface as always, and recognized not I:
Reddened and peeled skin, covered with matted, unkempt and distressed hair
Down to my shoulders, concealing my face and my darkened-to-blot-eye,
Tangled in wild and coarse beard, standing on end in the fresh air,
Which I admit was a similar look to the nails on my finger,
Gnarled and hooked, and for what it is worth, I acknowledge the image,
Dreadful and fright’ning, and thus I avoid in my visits to linger
When I descend to the tents by the spring on account of my visage,
Lest I be scandal or someone suspicious, a man of the wilds
Lacking possessions, and desp’rate perhaps to accost of a neighbor,
Meaning I spent much time at the summits and narrow defiles
Darting about to collect food, all I could manage for labor:
Grasses and insects and honey, if chances permit it be found here,
Mostly I burrowed for roots or I kept keen search for a squat leaf,
Spending my time by myself, I was wary to scrounge from the town near,
Hermit I certainly fit, and a beggar perhaps, but a grot thief?
Not so, as long as the Lord has the eyes in the heavens to perceive me,
Silent He might have remained, I anticipate God in my dreaming —
Call me a fool if I live as the Essenes, to forage naively
Whilst the unjust feast well — for I sleep hard now in the evening
Scud on the gales of the morning and chilled by its spirited motion,
Working the day for my substance alone and by night in reposing,
Holding a fast as my body is capable under the notion
That for the poor I can suffer; the wicked will suffer supposing,
Lest an injustice occur, in a good time wrath will be out-poured,
Heaping the doers of evil together in piles of bramble
Gathered for fueling a flame; by their self-laid snares or devout sword
None can expect to escape, as I know for myself as I amble
Having received but a smidge of the due harm which I deserve well,
Sinning in spirit and flesh, but I walk in a newness of living,
Willing the truth and desir’ng the precepts of God; to observe Hell
Sobers a petulant mind, and as once in our nation’s beginning,
Joshua Bar-Nun prayed and was heard as the sun in the sky halts,
Men can be changed, and the paths of their lives be forever remitted,
Fate dispossessed of her fortunes and graces released from its high vaults
Running as wadis anew and without old courses committed,
Like I observe from the heights of Ein-Gedi in hap contemplation
After I lapped from the spring-head, under a scantily-leafed palm,
Water in trickle descending my beard in a faint adumbration
Mirroring the dew of the mountains as David proclaimed in a brief psalm;
Then I undressed and inclined to the water descending the mountain
Forming a seasonal river, and slowly immersed for a washing,
Careful to clean of myself in its runoff and not in the fountain,
Which so away whisked filth of the flesh on a course I was watching,
Circling spiral of glistening stream to a target uncertain,
Draining a spring of a hidden description, my personal laver,
Thus I was cleansed; I arose, and I sunned for a time I determined,
Dried in the quick heat, then I was bound for repetitive labor.
Searching for herbs and the like, fresh date sprigs, pigeons of slow flight,
What was consumable, this I consumed, so for several hours,
Daily indeed, I traversed the ascents to the caverns of low light,
Down to the base near gardens unkept and with numerous flowers,
Searching betwixt unhewn stones massive and terribly sun-scorched;
Normally this was my work for the day but today is distinguished,
When I encountered a ruin uncertain, a place of Qumran-sorts;
Whereas I frequently rattled about in remains of extinguished,
Ages-abandoned encampments of Canaanite rites and transgressions,
Some of a far less knowable origin, though of a ritual pagan,
This was the strangest I found as of yet! by initial impressions
Carried an ominous air, insofar as no statue of Dagon,
Pole of Asherah or other distinctive iniquitous structures
Stood undisturbed; on a cliff-face toward the sea on a cape bluff,
Piles of crude-hewn blocks were in seats as desertion had ushered,
Others unhewn were arranged in oblong, semi-circular shape rough,
Some were of obvious purpose, in likeness of basin or table,
Most were peculiar, useless for ord’nary things I imagined,
Slanted or rounded enough that such use wasn’t enabled,
This in despite of apparent design as its movers had fashioned,
Thus I was better perplexed; on another account I was haunted,
Taking a moment to think: what here was worth hesitation —
Then it was clear, it was not old ruin but recent-absconded,
Smelling of fresh coals, wet clay, marks of a fresh habitation
Littered the scene on a closer inspection, but this was its own fear,
Not the disturbance I first felt, that it was under fell curse,
That I had stumbled upon grave things and I wasn’t alone here,
Watched by malicious, unseen ghosts summoned by ritual spell-works,
No, I consider the space I have found not Essene in practice,
Neither of nomads, its purpose unclear but its evils sensationed,
Ergo I kept my suspicions as though a profane apparatus
Lurked in the objects I saw, as if coated in bloody oblation,
Quiet I trudged in the midst of the gallery forming a stone arc,
Seeking my food for the day and of mind to endeavor a walk back,
Even if hunger was pushing me forward before it had grown dark,
Then I observed it, a symmetry-perfect revetment on bank of a grot black,
Made with a masonry careful and cultured, refined and delib’rate,
Like I observed once, lost in the place Skull-Duggery brought me
Where an equally fraught site surely the Lord would prohibit,
Gave me the same dread; masonry folded and plicated broadly,
Formed in a way as was hardly befitting a surface of lime-shale;
There at the summit, a crown of the curious, hummocky station,
Whereof a sendal was hung at its mouth of implacable time-scale,
Drew me to ponder it, limp in the whipping of brisk elevation —
Nay, I was not of a mind to be lured, and I rounded the cliff-neck
Circling ’round the encampment and saw on the opposite head-rock
Travertine steps of an ivory stair-case, bleached as a ship-wreck
Washed with divinely cerulean pools on descent of a dead-drop
Down to the Salt Sea plain, with but treacherous narrow a levee
Making a path up above all the pools, a construction uncertain
Weathered by age and unskilled hands, whether of Essenic bevy,
S’questered to wilderness living, who ventured along the curtain
Formed by the spilling of spring-head waters unseen in its offen
Toward the base of the mountain, but lacking an option without it,
Steady I walked on its innermost edges with abundant caution
Bloodied my feet on the shards of the crystalline braids as had sprouted
Coating the path, but the hurt was a small thing, thus I dismissed it
Since I had little of want to retrace the original journey
Laden with sinister monuments, dense air choking and twisted,
Nay, I am oft to entrust of myself to instincts as is worthy,
What was amiss? I cannot speak, still I am burdened by conscience
Which I will follow to peril and agony, peace for my bled feet!
Day and again, I am met with a challenge, my peace for despondence:
That I possess all I need, but I hunger for cheeses and red meat,
Thirsting for wine, and I know it is shameful, but even in travel
Finding encampments as such, I expect it supplied and abandoned,
Thus to my peril I venture about, with a hope to unravel
Parcels of fresh fruits, something prepared, once taken for granted,
Heaven has witnessed my want and resisted and hence I accept it,
Yet it remains, I remain with desire, and learn perseverance,
Only expressing in roaming desultory, that is excepted,
Mortals can call it divine intervention, divine interference,
Always divinely intentional, governed in secret addendum,
Which I envision as such: God makes by the ends of creation,
Governing things in the measure of time, mold-making from bedlam
Nothings from which He adduces a purpose, and gives its translation,
Wherein His ancient designs in the middle compose intersections,
Time as a sphere in rotation reverses intentions to meet it,
Giving us creatures a window to render a choice of directions,
Follow His plan or dispose of ourselves once all our time is completed,
Which I oblige: I resign to the wisdom of God, for I fear Him,
Knowing His power suffuses my life in concrete and abstract ways,
Marvel indeed at the holiest hiddenness, that is my theorem:
See how our God is beyond God (pardon my weak, inexact phrase)
Dwelling in utter transcendence, in light unapproachably bright-dark
Only received by the cho’te satisfaction of willful surrender;
Yea, if I ever was certain of something, I knew by the light-spark,
Fragile and dim at the edge of the dawn I was better decided
Might I be guided by beauty than own or enslave it forever,
Righteous is one who accepts as his Lord gives, hallowed is yielding,
Good-will formed in the breast of the man who has want to be better
Only in soul, for our God is a refuge, a shelter of shielding,
Not of the wickedest snares but of that much worse of a dread foe,
That of ourselves, and our guile in dealings and thirst for destruction,
Drinking impiety greedily, like the lake of a meadow
Loll and untroubled by wind, and a man can imbibe on its fluxion,
Cossetting darkness until he is naught from the face of the dry earth,
Though if he sought for himself — if I seek for myself — of another,
Different lake fed-full by a spring-head holy, inspired,
Hidden and not so seductive, obscured in its place and its color,
Then I be sound on my pilgrimage, waiting on high for deliv’rance,
Nay, I resign to His will, for the heavenly reason is elder,
Last of the last and my option is merely response to our diff’rence,
Whether it fitting to walk on cascades or be cursed in a welter,
Hope is a quality not for a rote expectation nor yearning,
Rather it serves as the will of a man who is small in a wide land,
Never complete in my challenges, always chastised and in learning
Might I be witness to God by His reason; His reason, His right hand,
Shewing the paths as a lamp to my feet, if I faithfully follow
What He has given in law, in explicit remarks in the Torah,
Also inscribed on my mind, I can hear faint like the swallow
Waking the dawn from the perch, but as like disobedient Korah,
Hearing and heeding the wisdom of God are of different efficience:
One is the way of the living and one is the way of the dying,
Set and cemented at death; to by habit partake in omniscience,
Meaning we listen to reason, we also partake in surviving,
That is, we pass to eternity, that by divine operations,
Man in the image of God can become by His virtues His child,
Working as man as the Lord works, rich in compassion and patience,
Icon as like: for from fear of the Lord are all wisdoms compiled
Fed by His rivers, His Spirit and Law unto fruit of perpending,
Leafy and strong, and becoming His forest, His waters, His portrait,
Just as the righteous are always remembered, His works are unending
Man in his likeness is mirroring glory, His energies corp’rate,
That we become as His works: we receive of His merciful guidance,
Helped by the horn of His strength as He raises our hearts from its stone bath,
Able to listen and live to His kindness and meeting His silence
Poured from the lights He ordains in the heavens and lighting His own path,
That we can walk as He walks, and be kept as He keeps of His holies,
Thus as I struggle and wait on the Lord, I will praise in my breathing,
Yea, in my every breath, and I ask but the wisdom to know these,
What I am ought, and to want as I ought, and be made to His pleasing
Waiting on something unspeakable, what it is God has intended,
What I can guess, if instructed by nature, is healing and teaching,
What I am sure I am doubly unsure, for if mortals were mended,
Might we be evil again? for how far is iniquity’s reaching,
This I had never considered until I encountered the angel
After I rose from the dead and had slept in the hyssop and flowers
Speaking of oaths and the weight of my sins, the offense of the shameful,
Hiding a great revelation cast in the dark of his powers,
This had become clear, God in His faithfulness sent him to mention,
Even command, I be better to perish than sin in my action,
Which I am mindful to follow; He thought for my life a distension,
Numbering days to proportion and add to it new satisfaction,
Thus I can only obey, so my choice is His choice, His intention,
Hitherto only revealed in the wisdom of prophets inspired,
Yet for a man as myself, in my lowly estate He had saw fit
Granting a messenger, speaking for holy ideas and Divine Word
Knowing my purpose in being and giving me precepts to profit,
Statutes of Moses, but even specific for one who was straying,
That I be saved from rebelling again; and I think, what caused it?
While the evening descends, tall palms of repute in their swaying,
Nodding repose, I am puzzled, I have naught to explain of the novel,
Fleeting description I gave for the cause of my dreaming encounter,
Yet nonetheless, I am puzzled, and thus as I come to my hovel
Help I cannot but consider eternal designs the profounder,
Questioning simply: for what am I bidden? for what has the Lord of creation,
God of the universe, bowed to my height? is today an audition,
Need me be holy, as once was required for priestly a nation,
Now but a dead man called to the greater perdurable mission,
Visited once by an angel with opaque cause, even a grim one,
Warning by dream to obey God’s Law with a trembling faith due
Ere the besetting of terrible trial, a penance for sin done,
Now as a pilgrim I onward am sent, still making my way through,
Watching the world as a challenger sought from the reach of my droll lair,
That in a while I ought to continue, departing Ein-Gedi
Keeping with daily attendance the mind of an object of sole pray’r,
Vigilant, sober, of sound thought — yea, pray that I be ready.
hermit above Ein-Gedi • the spring-head
scavenging food • finding a haunted site
resigning to God • my unknown call