INCANTATION AGAINST LILITH
"Veiled in velvet, is she here?
Leave off, leave off:
You shall not enter,
you shall not emerge.
It is not yours nor your share.
Return...return:
The sea is swelling;
its waves are calling.
I hold to the holy portion--
I am held in the holiness of the King."
Also: "The Nut Garden" by Yosef Gikatilla
The nut garden holds things felt and thought
and feeling for thought is always a palace--
Sinai with flames of fire about it,
burning though never by fire devoured.
On all four sides surrounded so--
entrance is barred to pretenders forever.
For one who learns to be wise, however,
its doors are open toward the East:
he reaches out and takes a nut
then cracks its shell, and eats..."
For some reason this reminds me of my own poem, "Akel Dama" perhaps re: the seed/nut being opened--never to fulfill its purpose of reproduction except..."unless a seed falls into the earth and dies"--it dies alone...
All from Poetry magazine, latest issue; but I don't think they would take mine!
Maybe later: Marina Tsvetaeva, whose photo with her dog looks amazingly like my sister.
I am not much of a poetry fan unlike my wife who is always composing a thought or two. However looking over your new Poetry magazine I did see this poem that intrigued me.
ReplyDeleteFable and Moral
By Paolo Febbraro
Translated from the Italian by Geoffrey Brock Read the translator's notes
He fell and died, the skier,
high up there in the snow.
And now, spring having come,
his father leaves his home,
dark in the valley, to throw
a hook in the heavy river.
Source: Poetry (March 2012).
I am thinking that the father come spring is throwing a grappling hook into the water's of the valley trying to recover his son's body after the spring thaw.
Could it be that simple?
The translator actually throws some speculations about that into the commentary.
ReplyDeletePeople are never simple.