A Great Miracle and other poems
By Ben Pincus
Restless, I lay awake, hot nights,
on the stone roof, among the figs
drying there, my mattress soaking
with sweat, watched the sky turn
pink over Nebi Smuel, out past
the old border. One man alone
with a rifle could close the road
for hours, leaving all borders behind.
How eager I was then, and full of fear.
A great miracle happened there,
but I did not see my life hinging
on your love and turned away.
Now I own history there not only
through fathers. I have a book
full of pictures of the Holy Land
and none of you, asleep inside.
By the Spring of Avdat:
an Archaeology
I stood against her,
on the edge of this furnace
at the end of the world.
We looked down into dust,
her legs like sticks of chalk,
writing lessons for me to learn.
Hidden meanings written
in skin and prayers, journeys,
the fear of unfettered holiness.
Rocks clicked over the edge of the pit,
hollow, we hiked down
into the wadi.
The narrow path
down to the spring,
was blazed and scuffed by hooves.
An ibex, nearly invisible,
stoops to gum
some root we cannot see.
Far up on the rim,
the flat, white cubes of Sde Boker,
a thin layer of civilization.
Down the canyon, wilderness,
a terrible wildness,
the lowest point on earth.
Nearby, in a cave, crumbling
parchments wait for some future
sensibility to make plain.
A jumble of tax receipts,
lists of grievances.
We left them there.
Scrolls of dreams,
illegible,
in separate, dusty jars.
Shammai, at the Library
The palsied man quavers by on tiptoes,
lurching along, not noticing himself
for one blessed moment, until our eyes meet.
I struggle to present the perfect reflection
of normality though I want to stare,
stiff visage akimbo, see how he does
in the face of my ridiculous attempt,
beginning to feel positively crippled inside.
Our two faces become one face, my inner
face is now someone else, hiding, primitive,
afraid to come out of the research library,
afraid of the simple courage to walk past
stacks of books on occupational therapy,
so afraid of being where the client is.
The Holy Tongue
What really attracted me to you
was your tongue,
And the sacred belief
that there is more to everyday life
than fills the ear
with hearing.
The story of the bride, laughing
The story of the bride, laughing
and laughing until the golden
fillings flew out of her mouth
becoming stars, or jewels
in her bridegroom’s crown.
We are wedding guests,
looking upward, the candle
light reflecting off the
golden fillings of our eyes.
When the fires of Horeb danced
in the night, like brides, reflecting
golden calves, we held her stolen
laughter, secretly in our hearts,
sadly, to our own undoing.
Ben Pincus, Jew, poet, curmudgeon, received his MFA from Bowling Green State University. He lives in Rockland County, NY, with wife and consequences.
These are his first poems at Ariga. You may contact him at benpincus@juno.com
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