Walking backwards to Jerusalem,
I did not know her nearness.
The sun beat down in waves,
The moon was silent,
And all our yesterdays hung in the dust –
Choking my cracked lips.
I am no Chanticleer,
Briskly proclaiming morning with bright relish.
I camp where the ghosts sleep
In the country of regret.
Declining stony pillows
Lest the angels break my sleep.
Frozen ponds
Mock my cold thirst.
It is always winter in the tyranny of silence:
Down where the slow fish gnaw
In numbing cold,
And daybreak never comes.
Still, O Jerusalem,
Your lovely streets torment me.
There is no way I can raise
Your sweet foundations
Here in this frozen wallow
Where the sunlight never comes.
2 comments:
You know? I still read all these. This one stands out from the rest.
I can put my finger on what it is, but not on what the difference means. If there's a scriptural allusion in this one, I've no idea what it is. My mind hunts around for a category into which it should fit, and I find nothing. It doesn't quite fit Christ or Mary or Joseph, I don't think. Or David really, or anyone else I can think of.
So my mind is forced to wrestle with it as you. And that makes me wrestle with it as me. Scientist say we understand how others feel because our own minds recreate the mental state we would have to be in to naturally react the way they're reacting. I find not being able to comfortably paint Mary onto this poem forces me to uncomfortably look for an experience I might have had that would make me feel like I was walking backwards to Jerusalem.
It turns out there are a lot of them.
Very intriguing. Evocative. Thank you.
"I camp where the ghosts sleep
In the country of regret."
An apt description of bondage.
Merry Christmas Lynne!
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