Track
Norman Finkelstein
##
Came out from among
giants
heading
toward giants?
We were in our eyes
like grasshoppers
and thus were we
in their eyes!
Came out from among
the pillars of the world
intact but in ruin
perfect world of ruins
So that what was behind
was what lay before?
Yehoshua son of Nun
and Calev son of Yefunne:
The land that we crossed through,
to scout it out—
good is that land
exceedingly, exceedingly!
#
Neither the Tuscan hills
nor the Wadi of Clusters
old and older
worlds from which you’ve come
Neither the Vernaccia
of San Gimignano
nor the syrupy purple
of the Passover seder
From a clear spring
at the base of what hill?
what middle flight?
what adventurous song?
Veering and veering
Discontinuity
abides and constitutes
herself as Presence
Break me
be with me
forty days
forty years.
##
Or is life itself
that intermezzo
as much behind you
as before?
Music the wilderness
in which you wandered
sweetly dissonant
moments, notes
The years as catches
read so long ago
“an iron bell of joy”
sounding in the deep
So that the passage of time
grows perceptible
here among the passages
of notes or text
Saving liberty from nothingness
restoring our freedom
as we acknowledge the Law
that saved us from bondage.
#
Saved us from what
or for what
again and again—
can’t help but ask
Erev Rosh Hashanah
5761
you taking notes
take note of this
An aging Jew
in exile from exile
away at home
attends upon the almond tree:
Diaspora
is still the way
of shreds and shards,
of all that frays,
discolored words,
and leaves astray,
and winds that scatter
nesting birds?
##
As if no words
could ever be my own
As if each word
stands in for another
These have been the fears
the enabling fears
The motives for spying
upon the lands of others
Possession and disinheritance
stalking the word
Haunting the word land—
Kennst du das Land . . .
Oh I do
but I left long ago
Now I am returning
forever returning
Lemons and oranges
milk and honey
Wandering in the passage
between the words and the things.
#
with mighty wings outspread
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good
with difficulty and labour hard
feed on thoughts that voluntary move
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall
Their starry dance in numbers that compute
wounds of deadly hate
with many a rill
With mazy error under pendent shades
into their inmost bower
Love unlibidinous reigned
self-begot, self-raised
my sect thou seest
sulphurous and nitrous
The grassy clods now calved
What next I bring shall please thee
death is to me as life
And for thee, whose perfection far excelled
See, Father, what firstfruits on Earth are sprung
add love
(in memory of Ronald Johnson)
##
Forty years in the desert of meaning
lost opportunities strangely contrived
Forty days in the deluge of meaning
two by two as previously arranged
Forty signs expecting completion
miscomputed or misconstrued
Forty lines suddenly recovered
meaning they were here all along
Meaning was here all along
wilderness or flood
Or flooded wilderness
evacuated of meaning
Jarring of place
place of the jar
In which nothing could be lost
so that nothing would be lost
Except except
stones from a mountain
Meaning this
and this
#
Dear T,
I think I understand what Spicer means in his first letter to Lorca when he writes that the letters “will establish the bulk, the wastage.” He declares that “they are to be as temporary as our poetry is to be permanent”; that in the letters, “We will use up our rhetoric . . . so that it will not appear in our poems.” He calls the letters “unnecessary,” though they are written, it seems, to leach out some sort of verbal dross—which would make them very necessary indeed. And of course, they appear in the midst of the poems, and have had at least as much influence. Spicer must have understood this by the time he includes the letter to Blaser in Admonitions: after all, he tells Blaser that “This is the most important letter that you have ever received.”
When I realized that I had miscounted in this movement, that I had written 3x20 lines instead of 4x20, I experienced a moment of sheer panic, despite what I’ve written about disasters, discontinuities, verbal shocks, and that which we “loveth best” revealing itself only against or through the structure. Hence this letter, which is absolutely necessary, in the same way it was deemed necessary for the Hebrews to wander in the desert for forty years after almost entering the Promised Land. I haven’t been wandering in the desert of meaning for forty years, but I have been here long enough to understand that the temporary can become permanent in all sorts of surprising ways. That’s just as well: the Promised Land is only a horizon; its promise ceases the moment one enters.
Thanks again for your continued support—and patience.
Love always,
N.
