(no subject)

[bronze_ribbons]

First rejection of the year in my in-box this morning. Hmph.

Marymary was looking for a poem with loudness yesterday. I was thinking I'd easily find some screamers near to hand on my bookshelves, but no: right now the poems that haunt me are more about fire than noise.

When the angels came, messengers like birds
but with the oiled flesh of men, they hung
over the scene with smoldering swords,
splashing the world when they beat
their rain-soaked wings against the turning sky.

- Eleanor Wilner, "Reading the Bible Backwards"

Above my desk
the Rabbi of Auschwitz
bows his head and prays
for us all, and the earth
which long ago inhaled
his last flames turns
its face toward the light.
Outside the low trees
take the first gray shapes.
At the cost of such
death must I enter
this body again,
this body which is
itself closing on
death? Now the sun
rises above a stunning
valley, and the orchards
thrust their burning
branches into the day.
Do as you please, says
the sun without uttering
a word. But I can't.
I am this hand that
would raise itself
against the earth
and I am the earth too.
I look again and closer
at the Rabbi and at last
see he has my face
that opened its eyes
so many years ago
to death. He has these
long tapering fingers
that long ago reached
for our father's hand
long gone to dirt, these
fingers that hold
hand to forearm,
forearm to hand because
that is all that god
gave us to hold.

- Philip Levine, "On a Drawing by Flavio"