Classic Poem

The city streets coil around me:
thongs of mud bite into my heart,
a dull ember in it yields only clay,
cords of fire lash naked melancholy fields,
they burn Jaikur in the pit of my soul,
they plant in the pit ashes of rancor.

These are streets of which drowsy hearthside legends say:
From them no more than from the shores of death
has any traveler through night returned,
as if there
echo and silence were wings of the Sphinx,
two wings that jut from buried rock through the subsoil.
Who then shall let water gush to those streets,
that our villages may be built around them?
And God, who shall one day restore Him there?

Night, paradise
regained, when the rock
weaves across the streets a grill
of stony twigs, congregates
the lamps like flame apples
and prolongs
into the taverns a few leaves of the fig tree,
who shall kindle love, love
on every path, in every coffee bar and home?
Who shall change the human claw into a hand
with which the child can wipe his forehead?
Whose touch, whose
divinity of spirit shall bead the veins of stone
with dew?

Forenoon:
if the wheels milling copper into the merchants' palms
might sing in praise to the demon of the city,
with the voices of birds in a sidra tree
from which God creates the hearts of children,
millwheels that glisten
like Jaikur's fish and with a name that is manifold —
who then would hear the spirit? Who
spread a shade against the scorching blaze of gold,
who find his way to her across the icebound sea
and not possess the ship for plunder?
And Jaikur, who is it
has shut her doors
to her child who knocks at them? And the road to her,
who diverted it, so that wherever he goes
the city cranes toward him?

And Jaikur is green, dusk
has touched the crests of her palm trees
with its sorrowful sun.
Sleep
has paved me a path to her: out of my heart
it goes
through the city labyrinth, across the night, across
the fortified citadels. In Babylon
the dancers are asleep, asleep the iron they sharpen,
the gasping of gold they hoard glazes
the eyes of storekeepers: this
is the crop of famines from the city's
double Eden.

My path
crossed millstones of flame,
here are vineyards, their dead sprigs
veins of Tammuz crossing the city, veins that branch
through every home and prison, every coffee bar,
every prison and bar and every nightclub,
through all the insane asylums,
every whorehouse of Ishtar,
ignoble flowers
bursting into bloom like lamps whose oil does not burn,
where no flame touches,
and in every coffeebar and prison, whorehouse and home —
" This water is my blood, will you drink it?
This flesh is my bread, will you eat it? "
And the goddess Lat grieves for Tammuz.

First light, and she lifts up her lament,
lifts up her voice, like a sigh of trees:
" O Fate, engine, killing him
you killed the Spring and the Rain. "
The Times and Events publish the news,
and the goddess asks the surgeon to help, to bring home
her son to her: his hands, his eyes, any trace of him.
She sends out her lament: " Cornblades of the moon,
my son's glass blood has been smashed in his veins,
the spark of our house has struck stone,
the city wall
crushed him, scattered him, flung him down in no time.
He wanted the light, wanted to disperse
darkness ... and he was defeated. "
She sends out her lament —
the voice fades, and the music.

And Jaikur is green,
the dusk has touched
the crests of her palm trees
with a sorrowful sun. My path
went to her, like a lightning flash
it showed and vanished, splendor returned, kindling the road
until it lit the city, and under the bandages
could be seen the wounds on my hand:
they were scorchmarks.

And outside Jaikur a wall has been raised up,
and a gate,
and a stillness envelops her.
Who shall pierce the wall? Who opens the gate? Bloody his
right hand on every lock? And my
right hand: no claw
to fight with on the streets of the city, no grip
to raise up life from the clay, it is clay only.
Outside Jaikur a wall has been raised up,
and a gate,
and a stillness envelops her.