Читать книгу The Scroll of Anatiya - Zoë Klein - Страница 12

All at once ~wrote Anatiya ~ my bones are seeped with understanding. 2Were you the child who peeked into the room? 3Suddenly the illusions of this life are torn out of their graves and exposed to the blazing sun. 4All is layers, layers of meanings, existing together in the subtlest of harmony. 5My ears are suddenly tuned in to these intricacies of music and meaning. 6In this stationary rock I see a parade of activity. In the white core of the sun I see all colors. 7I now hear your words, which I have loved from afar, which I have heard addressed always to others and never to me, I now hear them in layers. 8I hear you speaking to me, almost courting, softly and tearfully, explaining to me, gently, the nature of being. 9Do you love me? Have you always loved me? 10On the surface you speak of the wicked folk, but underneath you tickle me with fantasies, with the voice of the bridegroom rejoicing over his bride.

11What you say to them they cannot interpret,

but I now see the myriad meanings

you heap upon the precious crown of the letter yud.

12I am now wise to the betrayal of sight!

13Eve saw that the fruit was a delight to the eyes,

and even so when she ate, her eyes were opened!

14There are so many layers to seeing,

the deepest of which is called insight.

15We are born with only the barest level of sight.

We are basically blind,

and ego is our stumbling block.

16I surrender my ego to loving you,

I surrender my being to love,

and at once my eyes are opened

and I see that we are naked,

and I see that we are alone

under a lush

canopy of trees

on a plush

carpet of dewy grass.

17Your fingers taste

sixty times sweeter than honey.

18Rivers wind through the whole land

and God’s voice is here, strolling.

Fruit hangs with heavy pulp

sticky on our hands

and in our lips.

19Your lips are crimson.

Your body is gold

and seamless.

20A bed of blossoms

and beams of cedar

and cypress.

The flutter of a turtledove.

21My eyes are opened and I see

even deeper than Eve.

I see that I want to stay here,

I am not eager to leave.

22I love this clear-water wellspring.

I love this frankincense forest.

I have no trace of wanderlust.

23I spin the two cherubs

with their fiery swords

around and around

until they are dizzy

and giddy

and drunk on my rapture,

24so they think they are keeping us out,

but in truth they are keeping us in.

25I am wise to the deception of sight.

I see in this desert

there is the ghost of an ocean

26I see in this Temple

there is the Tower of Babel,

scratching at Heaven’s

glassy surface.

27The House that bears His Name

is defiled to make a name for ourselves.

28God is pulling back His bow

like an archer.

His arrow is a foreign nation.

29He will scatter us soon

over the face of the earth.

He will confound our language

and confuse our tongue.

30I hear you weeping,

“All is not well.”

31You know that we are naked and

only you and I are blushing.

32Only you and I are wise

to the flagrant bond between

shame

and joy.

~wrote Anatiya.

33I will not harvest the corners of our love

~wrote Anatiya

34but let the poor gather up grapes

and baskets of purple-hearted figs.

35I will toss morsels to the loveless throngs

as into a wishing well.

36Why do they sit by

with their heads bowed

and eyes lowered?

37Let them gather and search

for the fountain of youth

in the midst of the city,

and drink from its glistening draft.

38Sated in its dew

they will never die old,

but sing and dance into Sheol

a thousand years young.

39Lo, my kisses I will pile upon my palm like pollen on a petal,

and blow them to you on a sweet gust of my breath

that they might germinate in your pores.

~wrote Anatiya.

40Your head is the chief cornerstone of the Temple

upon which bears down an unbearable wall.

41My heart is shattered when I see you crumble.

God’s wrath is a poisoned well in your gut

rumbling up into your throat. Vile taste!

42Where is our mikvah of pure living waters?

43Hark! The outcry of my poor prophet!

The mountains tremble.

The Temple walls shudder and quake.

44The world tilts awkwardly,

like a drunkard, staggering through the ruins.

45Seized by desolation . . . I cry for you from the dark corner.

I gather your shadow into my arms.

46It is brittle and cold, quaking in the first throes of dying.

47I brush off the dust and kiss its fluttering eyelids,

and gently rock it in the cradle of my bosom, singing:

48“Hush, shadow, hush. I am your island of calm.

Return to our prophet,

surround his body like a moat around a castle,

fed by the fount of his tears.

Let no killing thing cross.

Let none pull asunder.”

49The shadow slips from me, healed,

and Jeremiah finally succumbs

to slumber, 50face damp,

and young as a child.

51In the morning I press my lips

to the tearstains on his sleeping mat,

and I shiver as a flower with pleasure

with the touch of morning dew.