Talisman
Rabbi Nathan ben Abraham I /Cairo Geniza
(For Harriet Bart)
Who are you? Where are you hiding?
Were you thrown,
tumbling through space,
aleatory,
radiant, only
to land, wrapped in dust, coming
over and down?
Or did you cross the black waves in the bottom of a ship,
and arrive, shivering,
nameless, on the dock,
then, and always, alone?
And when you entered the forest, the dark
series that had no edge,
did you look to the bark and
the leaves
for a name,
or did you wait by the path,
asking passersby,
practicing each syllable
on your tongue and your teeth,
memorizing the word until
it meant something fixed,
something beyond
its saying?
The world is full of strangers.
You never come into their thoughts
or dreams, yet there they are,
in yours each night,
or only once,
those human faces
ephemeral,
stubborn,
singular ...
Do they join the fawn and does
there in the mist
at dawn, wandering
through the ghostly tendrils
of bindweed,
the carpets of wild lupine?
The root is the measure of the canopy.
Wool fills the weak heart of the willow.
Was the rabbi, then, the root or the canopy?
Catalog margins, and incompletes,
jewelweed bursting in the sore eye’s
sightline,
marjoram, sage,
sweet pine,
mint, leafhopper,
mint again, and mint
again, perennial surprise.
The rabbi made a list:
chickpeas,
saltwort, and
slowest boxwood—
(these are, each one,
alkali, and ash)
purslane, basil,
vetch, and
pigweed.
Medicinal: a linen square
held against the thigh.
Sweet basil, cinnamon, ginger,
clove—and henna,
and poppy seeds.
What you bring inside, you bring inside.
Where are you? What are you hiding?
Your right hand extended to the west,
your left to the east,
though you turn and
turn in your bed.
Do you know the perils—the sycamore’s map,
the gall on
the grapevine, the
moth in the kale?
Aleph, pe, and resh,
the silver yad tracing down the column
when the column’s no longer there.
Tattered weeds, seed packets, rags.
What magic hovered nearby to shield you?
Never touch the book with your hand.
Slow-motion walk before a moving car,
fallen from the hayloft,
fallen on the marl, the fatal
final ticket of admission—
who remembers
to study the family tree?
All my notes thrown
in the trash—the means
to save them,
at last.
The single word changes, infinitely changing,
ruach,
within the wind a breath
within the breath
infinite wind
Difficult word like a stone on the tongue
The difficult persisting in its means of
speech.
The difficult persisting in its silence
and in the dreams of the waiting strangers.
Notes:
“Talisman” responds to artworks by Harriet Bart for her forthcoming show at the Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, February–May 2020.
Source: Poetry (September 2019)