from “Lamentation”
(for my father, on his dying)
(1)
In worded a world
how broken
from beginning:
sunburst and blossoms all
subterfuges
of creation ruses
of beauty –
fragrant thicket no less
complicit:
we exist
in a shattered vessel
shards at our bare feet –
Someone’s mother cries out
Stand still or
you’ll get hurt – and
you try hard in the slivered
moment
not to move.
(2)
Day asks: What does it matter
puting this anticipated
loss
on the page our
un-readiness
for imagined emptiness
of after –
why
direct half-
worded sorrow to tell
his tale or
your own
inked in another – it’s
just another
loss what
does it matter
it has always been
already
shattered –
Day asks
then asks again.
(3)
Because what
can be said?
In the end
the spoken stands
with bare spindly arms
around
its unspoken
brother what
fear
fastens
with tight knots to
your ravaged throat so
what you do
speak is always
poor and pale
shadows
of what
you do not.
(4)
You are dying.
But you do not say so
we do not say –
together
in steadfast
not-saying
alone
the winds orbit
echoing inner chambers where
we linger in
your researching
options thick
folders of studies
long letters to the scattered
family reports
of shifting numbers
platelets and neutrophiles
knotted
defiance of
your fall.
(5)
But our alphabet
aleph-bet
aleph
prepares itself
for radical
unraveling:
aleph at
abyss edge
acerbic sky above and
air or ache all
abeyant but un
abating
bet because
ballast or balm
bond to
before behind be
always
aleph
again un
availed avale our
Av awhile then
away and
absent
Aba
(6)
Six feet tall broad and bearded
traveling a world
(in a hospital bed)
professor and scientist
(huddled under
the covers)
in coat and tie commanding
(post-chemo hair white wisps
wistfully
soft) an auditorium
of students.
When I’d describe you
it would always be:
He’s a large man, he fills
the room (wound
at your neck
gaping) oh
small child
of poverty –
always
your wide-chested gestures
of generosity.
(7)
Thus loss
installs itself among us looses
an arrow –
Bow bent
we are set
as mark for the arrow
into unblemished skies
scars each hour our
forever altered
father
failing
falling
toward
harrowed
Oh bollow
the heart’s a
hollow, a hole in which, a window in
which, a cloud –
earth.
(8)
Cut loose (not
yet) we are
at
a loss
we are
in
a loss
and
lost in
lost to
what
we are
bound to
bound by
now slowly
losing
in days
and numbered
hours.
(9) Dream-inquiry 1
There were mourners in the orchard
under the almond blossoms
wrapped in black
prayer shawls
their feet bare in the dirt
heads bowed
before day’s last
golden thread & hue and
I knew
when night would
lie down at last among
nestled leaves in
the steep
and stolen instant, then
the gathered mourners
together
would lift their black shawls
to suddenly tassled winds
and take
flight –
Death’s shadow
is always white.
Copyright Credit: Rachel Tziva Back, "Lamentation" from A Messenger Comes. Copyright © 2012 by Rachel Tziva Back. Reprinted by permission of Rachel Tziva Back.