Poem for 3/30/22 - On A Painting By Wang the Clerk of Yen Ling by Su Tung P'O

 Su Tung P'O (1036-1101) - On A Painting By Wang The Clerk Of Yen Ling

(Translated from the Chinese by Kenneth Rexroth)

The slender bamboo is like a hermit.

The simple flower is like a maiden.

The sparrow tilts on the branch.

A gust of rain sprinkles the flowers.

He spreads his wings to fly

And shakes all the leaves.

The bees gathering honey

Are trapped in the nectar.

What a wonderful talent

That can create an entire Spring

With a brush and a sheet of paper.

If he would try poetry

I know he would be a master of words.

Poem for 3/29/22 - B'reishit (In the Beginning) by Primo Levi

Thanks to Michal Goldman for sending me this poem.

In the Beginning

Fellow-humans, to whom a year is a long time,

A century a venerable goal,

Struggling for your bread,

Tired, fretful, tricked, sick, lost:

Listen, and may it be a mockery and consolation.

Twenty billion years before how, *

Brilliant, soaring in space and time,

There was a ball of flame, solitary, eternal,

Our common father and our executioner.

It exploded, and every change began.

Even now the thin echo of this one reverse catastrophe

Resounds from the farthest reaches.

From that one spasm everything was born:

The same abyss that enfolds and challenges us,

The same time that spawns and defeats us,

Everything anyone has ever thought,

The eyes of every woman we have loved,

Suns by the thousands

And this hand that writes.

                                    13 August, 1970

                                    Translated by Ruth Feldman & Brian Swann

* The text I received reads "how" - I wonder--without needing to know so badly that I track it down--if it should read "now..."

Poem/Prayer for 3/28/22 - Al-Mu'id - from Divine Names by Rosina-Fawzia Al-Rawi

from Divine Names: The 99 Healing Names of the One Love by Rosina-Fawzia Al-Rawi (trans. Monique Arav)

My dear friends Raana Mumtaz and Faiza Khan gave me a wonderful gift of a book of Arabic calligraphy with 99 names of Allah, along with explanatory essays. I thought I would share excerpts of one of the essays.

Al-Mu'id - The Restorer, the One who brings back, the One who leads back.

[This name derives from a verse from the Koran:]

Sura al-Buruj (The Great Constellations - 85:13)

Behold, it is He who creates [man] in the first instance (mubdi'), and He [it is who] will bring him forth anew (mui'id).

These two Divine Names (mubdi' and mui'id) connect us above all with the movements of nature and the miracles that surround us every day...

People who worry a lot, and fill their heart with constant sadness and pictures of imagined catastrophes, open with this name a space that helps them become free of this burden...

Human beings were made of extremely primitive elements, and they gradually developed into highly complex beings who are not only endowed with a physical body but also with a spirit, with feelings, and with instincts. 

The idea of resurrection exists in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The Sufis understand resurrection symbolically. They see it as the dissolution of the I in His light, the dissolution of the tension of duality between good and evil in which the soul embedded in the world lives, and the experience of Unity, of the creative force through which everything concrete exists...

O Allah, remind us of what we have forgotten,

grant us knowledge of that which we do not know yet,

and let every new day lend more kindness and compassion to our deeds

so that our end may be better than our beginning!

Poem for 3/25/22 - Little by little, wean yourself... by Jelaluddin Rumi

 

Jelaluddin Rumi (1207-1273)

Little by little, wean yourself.

 

This is the gist of what I have to say.

 

From an embryo, whose nourishment comes in the blood,

move to an infant drinking milk,

to a child on solid food,

to a searcher after wisdom,

to a hunter of more invisible game.

 

Think how it is to have a conversation with an embryo.

You might say, "The world outside is vast and intricate.

There are wheatfields and mountain passes,

and orchards in bloom.

 

At night there are millions of galaxies, and in sunlight

the beauty of friends dancing at a wedding."

 

You ask the embryo why he, or she, stays cooped up

in the dark with eyes closed.

 

                   *

                                     *

                                                              *

                                                                                 Listen to the answer.

There is no "other world."

I only know what I've experienced.

You must be hallucinating.

• translated by Coleman Barks

Poem for 3/24/22 - The Birth of Language - Lucille Clifton

I chose this poem in honor of CCB's current rabbinic intern, Giulia Fleischman, who introduced me to Lucille Clifton's poetry and who is teaching about midrashic poetry today. 

 Lucille Clifton

the birth of language (from Quilting, 1991)

and adam rose

fearful in the garden

without words

for the grass

his fingers plucked

without a tongue

to name the taste

shimmering in his mouth

did they draw blood

the blades    did it become

his early lunge

toward language

did his astonishment

surround him

did he shudder

did he whisper

eve

Poem for 3/23/22 - The Pact - by Victoria Redel

 

The Pact

Victoria Redel

All those years—paw of again, paw of let’s go,  of lake-plash, of come throw, perked ear of what’s that? of yanked back who’s that? unsettled pacer of storms, investigator of grass, distinguished scholar of curbside, delighted roller in the perfume of foul, sleek  fetcher, sock chewer, under table sleeper, taut leaper into air & pond—then, all at once, it became her turn & the reliable  body began—the unimaginable undoing;  while we—scratchers of belly & ear, callers of hey,  come back, diligent trainers of down & come, companions of dawn, partners of rain, & errand, stick throwers, ball wranglers,  chair readers & nappers, while at our feet with twitch & yelp, she rustles through the high grass of dream— understood it was now our turn,  which meant—as it does with each animal sorrow —doing the unimaginable.

Copyright © 2022 by Victoria Redel. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 21, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

Poem for 3/22/22 - Neither by Samuel Beckett

 Samuel Beckett: Neither

to and fro in shadow from inner to outer shadow

from impenetrable self to impenetrable unself
by way of neither

as between two lit refuges whose doors once
neared gently close, once away turned from
gently part again

beckoned back and forth and turned away

heedless of the way, intent on the one gleam
or the other

unheard footfalls only sound

till at last halt for good, absent for good
from self and other

then no sound

then gently light unfading on that unheeded
neither

unspeakable home