Where the word came from, exactly,
Nor how. Could have been etymologically
Related to fertility or to mountain, shaddai,
But one would have to admit, hard pressed,
There's a considerable range between
Those conceptions, and no traditions
Linking the two explicitly, the way, say,
The Chinese Dao, the Latin Spiritus exhaled
Along lines glowing with significance, sung
To core metaphors like plucked strings
Vibrating. Could have meant something else
Entirely, which, sitting in my bare garden
On a grey windy day in the liminal season
Between meteorological and astronomical
Pronouncements of official spring,
Waiting for the usual vision, that wonder
That could save me temporarily from being
So increasingly temporary, I rather liked.
I liked the idea of an earlier name for the God
Who roared at excuse-making Moses
To get going, while by-the-way explaining,
As if Moses or anyone had asked Him,
Your forefathers knew me as someone else
But I'm really Me, and I'll stick by My word
That I gave under another, mysterious name
That no one will know in a few thousand
Years or so. It was a nice piece of editing,
Retroactive splicing of then-known traditions
By the priests, I guessed, but neither here
Nor now. No. I preferred to keep the dark,
Vague mystery of it as a blunt unknown,
That there was a name for this God we know
That was truly ancient, truly local, truly
Lost, like us and all our dreams of divinity
Rooted down under belief's composted duff,
And that that name was more sayable, but
Vivid, specific, and terrifyingly uncontrolled.
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