A Byzantine Diptych
I. Leviticus Again
"And his issue is unclean," 15:3
He is human and so will be humbled
He is flesh and so will fail
He is bone and so will be broken
He is blood and so will be bleed
He has cheated and so will be changed
He has deceived and so will be drained
He has mocked and so will be muddied
He is hollow and so will howl
He has sullied and so will sadden
He is nothing and so will be nought
He is pain and so will perish
He is emission and so will be missed
He is water and so will weep
He is cavernous and so will cry
He is dross and so will disgust
He is a carcass and so will be cast
He has soured and so will stink
He is rank and so will retch
He is worm and so will writhe
He is corruption and so will be betrayed
He came forth, and so he will fade
Summer Syntax
Saxifrage, arabis, phlox;
lobelia, euphorbia, nasturtium;
coreopsis, guara, flax;
brunnera, salvia, rubrum;
delphinium, snapdragon, alyssum;
bacopa, yarrow, thyme;
viola, cress, chrysanthemum,
convolvulus and clematis that climb
over the flowering fescue,
the prairie mallow, and sage,
with Lucerne sisyrinchium to the rescue
of spirit surveying the cage
of its inching calibrations —
luring us out to stare
into this constellation's
efflorescence as everywhere.
Pathetic
It seemed sick, really, or pathetic:
fertilizer bombs being wired in Gaza,
flesh scraped from a Tel Aviv bus;
radar whirring miles above us,
state-sanctioned torture up the street,
and information like an epidemic —
but I took some comfort today, for hours,
from a kitten we found near a mound of garbage
and nursed back from the edge of death.
By evening, I could feel its breath
against the skin of my neck as it slept —
and reconfigured my notions of power.
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The poems above are selected from a forthcoming book The Invention of Influence (New Directions 2014).
Peter Cole's previous books of poems include Things on Which I've Stumbled (New Directions). Among his volumes of translations are The Poetry of Kabbalah: Mystical Verse from the Jewish Tradition and The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492. Cole divides his time between Jerusalem and New Haven.
