The Scroll of Anatiya. Zoë Klein
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ducked down and timorous,
here-ever, here-after
a moon-pebble caught in your small orbit
twining forever here,
after there are no words left
falling in tumult from the Throne
and God turns away to tend
an underground spring in the desert,
here am I still constant
while age picks at me with tiny fingers.
I fear not. 36Love is strong as death.
37My desire rolls over me and flattens my bones.
38A frosty hand grabs hold of my heart
and you appear to me as a warm shaft of light.
I am sick! I am sick for you, prophet!
39I run to a high hill while tears slant from my eyes,
I might leap, I just might!
40I scramble upward to the hilltop.
This lust is too base, too alien,
it wants to bury me young!
41I must climb straight above it.
At the top my throat is closing.
42My fingertips are swollen and pulsing.
43O Lord, how you have fashioned restlessness in this young girl!
44It is no use.
I wrap my legs around a verdant tree
like well-watered vines.
Its branches enfold my back lightly.
A young leafy shoot reaches out.
45My arms woven amidst its branches,
my hands grasping tight,
I lifted myself up,
(O forgive me Blessed Watcher!)
46my mouth did open
and I pressed my dry tongue to the bark
and I loved and I said
to the tree, 47“you are my lover.”
And I cried for salvation
and the tree, it shook with the weight of me.
48I curled up, dear Lord, and I cried until dawn.
My love has driven me mad.
I call You to save me, to account for my soul.
49Do not stone me for my thirst!
Do not drop Your fists of hail upon me!
50Do not turn Your back on me, O Lord!
51I vow that no man will know me,
no man will know me, but the trees,
do forgive this palest of iniquities,
the desert trees will bear marks of my teeth
~wrote Anatiya.
52You are sitting on a flat stone in the valley
listening to the shining words of the Lord.
53They come to you strung together in furious poetry.
I stand by and gather handfuls of spilt syllables
which roll away like forgotten jewels,
round and smooth over the white face of sand.
54I wear them around my neck.
55Your hair is raven black, slick as feathers,
and the afternoon sunlight is reflected in your locks
as a glowing ring of amber light
that cascades gently over your shoulders.
56Your skin is a sheen over a shadow,
a bright over a dark.
57Should the dark side of the moon
surface with the bright, this would be your pallor.
58Your eyes are the first day of Creation.
In them, God separated the light from the darkness.
59God called the light “Eye,”
and the darkness God called “Iris.”
60Your lips are the deepening horizon.
61The blue veins on your wrists
are a perfect map of the rivers of Eden.
Here is Pishon and her sister Gihon,
winding up the length of your arm, side by side.
62And here branches Tigris and here branches Euphrates,
and here your lifeblood courses
from your upturned hand, a tiny Eden,
from hand to head, from head to hand,
and heart, and love,
63if I could kiss you now
just one place, it would be there,
upon your delicate palm.
64And then upon your neck and inside your setting-sun mouth,
for no, I could never kiss you just one place my love.
I could kiss you never,
but never just once
~wrote Anatiya.
3
If I were your wife I would hide my blush behind a veil of sky. I’d need no embroidered garment, no band of gold. 2And if you should look at my fingers and ask, “My love, with what shall I adorn these hands, these almond blossoms?” 3(for so I imagine your speaking), then I would say, 4“Carve for me your third eye, the one that shows you visions of the Lord, genuine from under your brow, and I shall wear it upon my finger. It is the gem with the most excellent clarity.”
5But fantasy is for the unworthy.
You must know that I am a desert nymph,
whoring with the foliage.
6The trees straighten up
in reverence to me.
7How I myself despise.
It is because of me that they become
brittle and chapped, those blameless sprouts.
8When no cloud offers respite,
and no rain quenches their wooden hearts,
it is because I have laid a curse upon them,
tainted their sap with my own.
9Hard-working ants march up to the spot
to investigate the sweet mingling
of girl-child and resin.
10Dear Father, water your garden!
Do not mind me as I lie among the sticks.
11Jeremiah is the companion of my youth,
and I am only his shadow’s shadow.
12Do not withhold the Heaven’s late showers
on account of such a forgotten dream,
such a forgettable dreamer as me.
13Josiah was eight years old when he became king, nearly twenty years before my birth. 14I imagine him then, as little and lean as I today, nestling himself into that wide golden throne.