69

When young
I knew everything.
the more I live
the less I know

but the less I know
is more
permanent

like clouds
always shifting
so that we call them
clouds, not
apartment blocks

though those shift too,
new tenants all the time
the same joys
the same woes

Marriage divorce
not enough work
or too much

Delilah still stands
on a corner in Parkdale
in a black dress

Virgins of Israel
still walk,
have always
will still walk,
hips swaying,
eyes gleaming

The Holy prostitutes pass
and the priestesses of Ba'al
make public love on every billboard
with the priests

and beneath each struggling root
of grass in every crack of pavement

The snake whispers
again the tree beckons
always will be tasted.

The flaming sword
and on the asphalt
a burst of flame
a newspaper, say,
consumed but someohow
always "news."

a bird or a wind in the paper
lifts it

a bird or a spot of ink
on sky or paper
turns



Where is Pharoah dining tonight?
What threat can move him, his eye
on CNN Financial News, his hand
on The Wall Street Journal, ear cocked
to The Market Report?

He disbelieves,
has always
will always disbelieve
has kept, is keeping,
will always keep his slaves.

And they no sooner free
than whining to return
to a dying life
or a living death

Time
one then:
Creation, Apocalypse,
Building, Desecration, Restoration:
One The Name and under the same Tree
I wait,
Call with my same Jewish soul
In a tongue unknown to my tongue,
I of circumcised lips,
heart,
fit only for the dog to lap?

Philistia rising
Judah too, Israel,
and Assyria, Babylonia, Persia,
Greece, Rome, Europe, America.

The Czar has proclaimed
and Jeff Davis's issued
his own emancipation proclamation
from the house of David
—from Linclon's divided House.

And Rasta on corna—or
the crown on the dashboard—
Heilie Salasie, the Branch of David
BOOM! in Waco, Texas
or on crucifix,
waiting for the nuclear winter
to warm up all the corpses.

In Bucharesti
five
rugs rolled out to Mecca

while dangling above:
America, France, Great Britain,
Russia, India, China, Israel...

Smoulders the last remains:

Bavel, Ur, Nineveh, Mari,
Memphis, Jericho, Ras Shamra,
Samaria, Jerusalem, Ecbatana,
Carthage, Constantinople, Rome,
London, Paris, Berlin,

Aushwitz and Hiroshema...
Yamomoto with an ephah:

"Not to go up."
They go up.

God delivers the panzer divisions
into The Hand of
United States General
George S. Patton
marches round Berlin
Seven times, Gideon blowing
and Jericho falls and rises
rises and falls:
witnessed by the Hand
holding the remote,
surfing...

All this
"today" is
usually yesterday,
rarely today
but
when it is
the body is
somehow
resurrected—

I find myself in the Temple,
the first one, the second
and the third:

the ten-second Temple of God: this

is what I call
living.


© Dan Goorevitch