Let Us Compare Mythologies. Leonard Cohen
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and delicate twisted feet.
But he could not hang softly long,
your fighters so proud with bugles,
bending flowers with their silver stain,
and when I faced the Ark for counting,
trembling underneath the burning oil,
the meadow of running flesh turned sour
and I kissed away my gentle teachers,
warned my younger brothers.
Among the young and turning-great
of the large nations, innocent
of the spiked wish and the bright crusade,
there I could sing my heathen tears
between the summersaults and chestnut battles,
love the distant saint
who fed his arm to flies,
mourn the crushed ant
and despise the reason of the heel.
Raging and weeping are left on the early road.
Now each in his holy hill
the glittering and hurting days are almost done.
Then let us compare mythologies.
I have learned my elaborate lie
of soaring crosses and poisoned thorns
and how my fathers nailed him
like a bat against a barn
to greet the autumn and late hungry ravens
as a hollow yellow sign.
THE SONG OF THE HELLENIST
For R.K.
Those unshadowed figures, rounded lines of men
who kneel by curling waves, amused by ornate birds—
If that had been the ruling way,
I would have grown long hairs for the corners of my mouth . . .
O cities of the Decapolis across the Jordan,
you are too great; our young men love you,
and men in high places have caused gymnasiums
to be built in Jerusalem.
I tell you, my people, the statues are too tall.
Beside them we are small and ugly,
blemishes on the pedestal.
My name is Theodotus, do not call me Jonathan.
My name is Dositheus, do not call me Nathaniel.
Call us Alexander, Demetrius, Nicanor . . .
“Have you seen my landsmen in the museums,
the brilliant scholars with the dirty fingernails,
standing before the marble gods,
underneath the lot?”
Among straight noses, natural and carved,
I have said my clever things thought out before;
jested on the Protocols, the cause of war,
quoted “Bleistein with a Cigar.”
And in the salon that holds the city in its great window,
in the salon among the Herrenmenschen,
among the close-haired youth, I made them laugh
when the child came in:
“Come I need you for a Passover Cake.”
And I have touched their tall clean women,
thinking somehow they are unclean,
as scaleless fish.
They have smiled quietly at me,
and with their friends—
I wonder what they see.
O cities of the Decapolis,
call us Alexander, Demetrius, Nicanor . . .
Dark women, soon I will not love you.
My children will boast of their ancestors at Marathon
and under the walls of Troy,
and Athens, my chiefest joy—
O call me Alexander, Demetrius, Nicanor . . .
PRAYER FOR MESSIAH
His blood on my arm is warm as a bird
his heart in my hand is heavy as lead
his eyes through my eyes shine brighter than love
O send out the raven ahead of the dove
His life in my mouth is less than a man
his death on my breast is harder than stone
his eyes through my eyes shine brighter than love
O send out the raven ahead of the dove
O send out the raven ahead of the dove
O sing from your chains where you’re chained in a cave
your eyes through my eyes shine brighter than love
your blood in my ballad collapses the grave
O sing from your chains where you’re chained in a cave
your eyes through my eyes shine brighter than love
your heart in my hand is heavy as lead
your blood on my arm is warm as a bird
O break from your branches a green branch of love
after the raven has died for the dove
RITES
Bearing gifts of flowers and sweet nuts
the family came to watch the eldest son,
my father; and stood about his bed
while he lay on a blood-sopped pillow,
his heart half rotted
and his throat dry with regret.
And it seemed so obvious, the smell so present,
quite so necessary,
but my uncles prophesied wildly,
promising life like frantic oracles;
and they only stopped in the morning,
after he had died
and I had begun to shout.
REDEDICATION
A painful rededication, this Spring,
like the building of cathedrals between wars,
and masons at decayed walls;
and we are almost too tired to begin again
with miracles and leaves
and lingering on steps in sudden sun;
tired by the way isolated drifts lie melting,
like hulks of large fish rotting far upbeach;
the disinterested scrape of shovels
collecting sand from sidewalks, destroying streams;
and school-children in streetcars,
staring out, astonished.
We had learned a dignity