The cult of the soul,
Oracles in sacred caves,
Things that were new in those days,
Were bound to yield a figure
Such as Epimenides,
Mystical poet,
Magical theist,
Purifier of Athens,
Narrator of origins,
Ancestor of Rip,
Who followed his flock to fall
Asleep fifty-seven years
Dreaming in a cave,
And awoke as a fable.
Zeus, he claimed, was immortal.
Cretans were liars.
Death was not death for the soul,
Although he himself
Wasn’t so eager to go,
Hanging on for another
Hundred years or so.
—-
For circle-drawing Honi,
The dream was the end,
Not the beginning,
Of wisdom. He slept
Only after questioning
The Psalm of Ascent,
Wondering how the captives
Of Zion in Babylon
Could have dreamed away
Those seventy years
Before they returned,
Only after questioning
The reasoning of a man
Planting a carob
That would not bear fruit
Until after he was dead.
Honi scratched his head.
Then the rocks closed around him
As he stopped by the roadside
For a little nap.
When he woke, seventy years
Had passed, his offspring
Had died before him,
No one believed him
When he said he was himself,
For his own name had become
A by-word for bygone days
When the law was clear,
When he had helped the scholars
Whose descendants mocked him now.
And Honi sang no glad song,
Nor composed new poetry,
Nor drew any more circles
To make the rain fall on him,
But died without companions,
As the Talmud reminds us—
“It’s companionship or death.”
—-
We’ll pass over the Seven
Sleepers—no one dreams in teams.
Likewise, the three-hundred nine
Years slept by the Companions
Of the Cave, a retelling,
In the terms of a new faith,
Of that old competition
With cruel polytheism
By victorious,
Righteous monotheism,
Except to note what Rip learned,
Later, much, there’s always new
Winners, whether the sleeper
Was said to have known
The winning side in advance
Or to have woken surprised.
Or perhaps that’s the reason
For sleepers plural
In tales of faith triumphant.
A winning side needs a team.
—-
The solitary Peter
Followed his flock faithfully
As Epimenides had,
And was the first to meet the ghosts
At their silent game,
To drink in the mystery,
And not simply fall asleep.
Faithful Peter the goatherd,
Neither a scoffer,
Like Honi, nor evasive
And shifty as Rip,
Still woke up without his goat.
At least his village
Finally recognized him.
He neither suffered
Nor was enlightened,
Grew neither ancient nor
Was hailed as proof or saint.
Peter went back to Peter,
A villager about whom
A strange tale was told.
Katabasis does not change
All the same. Resurrection
For some of us who were lost
Is just one more resumption.
—-
The sun is on the mountains.
The storm blows through the desert.
Rain sweeps its curtains
Over the cactus
And irrigated imports
Alike, dragging lightning strikes.
From the safety of our perch
It all feels alright.
We want to see what happens.
While thunder crumples up night,
Images, words, and numbers
Dance in the dark together.
Their hundreds have failed
At interviewing the world
In its own language.
If the world has a language,
We’re at most a turn of phrase.
We are the little bowlers,
Ghosts playing our game.
We’re not sleepers. We’re sailors.
We’re long-ago knights,
Imported from land to land
By every new narration.
We are climbing the canyons
With the storm, with the lightning.
Help us carry up our drink.
We can’t guarantee you’ll stay
Youthful. We can’t guarantee
You’ll have many years left you,
Or any one to love you,
Or anyone who knows you
Or recognizes your name.
We can guarantee you’ll sleep.
The storm will be gone.
Our game will be done. The world
Will have moved on when you wake.
—-
A moment before he woke,
Epimenides wandered
In his sleep, in his domed cave,
Thinking, how to reascend?
It’s been fifty-seven years.
Will this dreaming never end?
No comments:
Post a Comment