MENORAH

By Jack Hirschman

The basin of winter water

from the stream in which

I throw my face the morning after.

The candle is burning.

Neither mystic democracy

to fall back on. Nor an ideology

of secularity. Just the bed. Sacred.

Candle still burning.

 

No temple to regain but the overthrow

of all this painful indifference

that lives in the heart of things

weâve become. The candle goes on burning.

 

Fed up with chips to play,

to eat, to read whole books on

off a screen. The candle

burns on.

 

A guerrilla in the frigid jungle

of Nothing. Darkness but for

the burning candle.

 

Is this history, pre-history,

post-history? I look out the window.

Snow is on the branches of a poem

I wrote 30 years ago. Now. Tomorrow.

The candle glow will be turning blue.

 

O days of singing, dancing

and the dreidelings of glee,

why do you remind me of me?

 

I'm turning into stone again.

The candle's dimming.

 

A child is licking the melt

The candle is dark.

His eyes blaze in the dark all winter.


 

NIGHT FALLS
By Jack Hirschman

Night falls

on its knees

and does

also tuck

their legs

in under

the moonlight.

 

I am sitting

in the very

same cafe seat

you sat in

the day after

I kissed you

drunkly on

the run, your

shoes under

the table

nailing me:

nature is all

around my mem-

ory, its belly

gently pulsing.

Sprang out of

the corral, the

mustangs! Why

here, and now?

Because of the

sound of their name.

And because you

loathe almost

 

most of all

the idea of any

animal in prison,

the human most

of all,

 

even this beast

you know best

and least,

who sleeps with

his third eye

ever open below

the waist:

 

a Three, a Spread

a Throne of a Bed,

a Carytid and,

at the foot,

the snake's Kiss.

 

It's the curve

of your back above

your knees in

the moonlight

the moonlight

and the way

your lips moving

slowly

 

up and down my cock

and the yes

there is

no

No in response to.


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