Shekhina
Only for a while do we warm ourselves With flowers & bluebirds &
grieving. Shekhina, you are the
midwife of illness & weddings
& all that is sparks & pregnant & all that
is elbows & kisses & semen. You accompany exile’s wretched longing To consummate
the soul’s deep-plum sunken glee. You are all that is lightheadedness
& insomnia & that
which is missing & that which reveals Wherever we were, whatever planet. Your voice is that of a sick person, A dried-up sea, the dark furniture of
sighs, The melancholy elegance of rusted piers & light
which is always changing, always fleeting, The sun that rakes the sidewalk in
geometries Of impossibly thin shadows That glide into the
orange dusk, Into the inner chambers & inner
sanctums Winged & nude & beyond the
remoteness of The iron
shouting of the world. In the vagina of centuries, Your body is an alphabet of blood & quarantines
& testicles & pent-up sobs, Candles & thick milk, the bread of
thighs, The alabaster smell of humility, ribs, Black lightning, the hooves of silence
concealed Within the
concealed of the concealed within. It is you who
carry us to the sapphire mountains, You whose
feet go down to death. Nowhere on earth is void of your gown
of erections. You are the hours & weeks yoked to
honey & bandages, The elegance
of hovels, the mansions of poverty. When cities tremble with rain, it is
you speaking— Filling that impossible distance
between solitude’s Round flaming window of amorous
throbbing, Its ladders & palaces that float by
& arms of pain & realms
of repentance & realms of copulation. Abrupt, you lean against the roots of
air As we choose something personal, Something mutual, something
indescribable, & opening
to every crevice, every uncharted beloved That falls through the skin Of the violet
tides of our frenzied nothingness. In the wet green rhythm at the heart of
absence, It is you who knows the violence that
comes To each life, who touches us When we wished to die, when we wanted
to live. As we remember the face of weeping You are here like a synagogue made from
a dress, Like a mother waking up in the middle
of the night to bake a dark
creamy-brown chocolate cake. When we lie down in dust, You are the dust of premonitions From where begins our love over again. 18 February–18 March 1996 [Published in The Dance Of Yellow Lightning Over The
Ridge: Poems 1993-1997. © 1998 by Jim Cohn.]
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