Book of Mercy #11-15

[lizzytysh]

Hi Doron ~

Have you decided to wait longer on continuing the continuation?

Thanks.


~ Lizzy

[tomsakic]

I suggest that we do it after the weekedn, if there's any sane people left on this board.

[lizzytysh]

I recall a number of sane people, exhibiting sane behaviours, on this thread; and a stimulating and informative, ongoing discussion ... hopefully, the text will appear soon, even before the weekend is out .

For now, I need to feed my animals... so much for my 7 AM sleep-in time. Up and here at 5:30 .


~ Lizzy

[tomsakic]

There's no sane people, I concluded. Or at least they keep silent.

It's nice at least that this thread led to some conclusions and personal relations' clearing on this Forum.

Apologies for not writing in the proper section (this apoogy is for our constant "keepers of Truth" and "guardians of Beauty", they know who they are).

Regards,
Tom

[lizzytysh]

Hi Tom ~

Well, this thread for sure has much to offer us all, and it can be a respite in other ways, as well... maybe, since I see Doron is here even as we speak, he won't mind entering the text, eh ?

Here's hoping...


~ Lizzy

[DBCohen]

OK, I cave in. Anything to keep up sanity. Here goes.

I.12
I draw aside the curtain. You mock us with the beauty of your world. My heart hates the trees, the wind moving the branches, the dead diamond machinery of the sky. I pace the corridor between my teeth and my bladder, angry, murderous, comforted by the smell of my sweat. I weakened myself in your name. In my own eyes I disgrace myself for trusting you, against all evidence, against the prevailing winds of horror, over the bully’s laughter, the torturer’s loyalty, the sweet questions of the sly. Find me here, you whom David found in hell. The skeletons are waiting for your famous mechanical salvation. Swim through the blood, father of mercy. Broadcast your light through the apple of pain, radiant one, sourceless, source of light. I wait for you, king of the dead, here in the garden where you placed me, besides the poisonous grass, miasmal homesteads, black Hebrew gibberish of pruned grapevines. I wait for you in springtime of beatings and gross unnecessary death. Direct me out of this, O magnet of the falling cherry petals. Make a truce between my disgust and the impeccable landscape of fields and milky towns. Crush my swollen smallness, infiltrate my shame. Broken in the unemployment of my soul, I have driven a wedge into the world, fallen on both sides of it. Count me back to your mercy with the measures of a bitter song, and do not separate me from my tears.

Theodor Adorno famously argued that "writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric" (see here, for example: http://www.dactyl.org/thought/LaCapra_p ... lease.html). But what can a person who still needs to write poetry do? LC tried to do it through writing “barbaric” poetry in Flowers for Hitler. Then he went back to writing beautiful songs, but here we can see how difficult it is for him. Some also said that God had died in Auschwitz, and I for one can certainly relate to that. I have studied many attempts of writing theology, and especially theodicy, following the Holocaust, and found none convincing, although some efforts are very beautiful. And here too we find the same notion, but the bottom line seems to be – after some almost masochistic efforts – hope beyond all hope, faith beyond all possibility of faith (and do I follow him in that? Well, as I’ve said several times, I’m not going to discuss my own convictions. Let’s just say that I’m an admiring onlooker, trying to make sense of what I see and hear).

Many themes that we have found earlier reoccur: the curtain (or veil), the garden with its poisonous plants, and the figure of David, which is so prominent for him at this stage. And appropriately for the subject of this prayer, we also find the allusion to the grand vision of Ezekiel and his resurrected dry bones: “The hand of the LORD came upon me. He took me out by the spirit of the LORD and set me down in the valley. It was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many of them spread over the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, ‘O mortal, can these bones live again?’ I replied, ‘O Lord GOD, only You know.’ And He said to me, ‘Prophesy over these bones and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live…”, and so on and so forth, Ezekiel 37:1-14. I believe the allusion made here by the narrator is rather sarcastic.

As usual, there are many striking images in this relatively very long prayer, and a detailed analysis is called for. I liked the one about the “black Hebrew gibberish”, which must refer to the printed text in the books he’s trying to decipher, with some frustration. And there are many others, but now it’s somebody else’s turn to carry on.

[lazariuk]

I.12
Find me here, you whom David found in hell. The skeletons are waiting for your famous mechanical salvation. Swim through the blood, father of mercy. Broadcast your light through the apple of pain, radiant one, sourceless, source of light. I wait for you, king of the dead, here in the garden where you placed me, besides the poisonous grass, miasmal homesteads, black Hebrew gibberish of pruned grapevines.

This made me remember something.
I was in a church once, as far as churches go it was one that I liked, the minister there Reverened Burke in Vancouver would occasionally seem to have a nervous breakdown in front of the congregation taking a position that he was more in need of God's mercy than anyone else.
Anyway this one sunday evening I was sitting close to the door, a position that I personally liked, and I was watching what was going on in the church. What was going on was that the total congregation was very united in praising God and doing so very ferevently and it seemed that a considerable amount of love was flowing between everyone. It made me a little uneasy and I was asking myself if this really was a sign of the power of the spirit in people's lives. What I was thinking about was the people outside of the church and how these same people in the church would behave the next day away from this atmosphere.
The next day I was walking along Hastings street in vancouver on a cold rainy monday morning and I stepped into an Army and Navy discount department store. It was a lousy place to be, no one seemed very happy and the bright neon lights of the store brightly showed how tired and stressed everyone was. It really seemed like people were skeletons covered in tired flesh. I looked into all these tired faces and thought about my questions of the previous evening. Then I thought.
Here - right here amoung all these people so battered and bruised. Here is where I want my church to be. This is where I want to see signs of God's loving kindness. This is where I want to see joy shinning.
I stood there thinking that this was my prayer that this be the Holy Place.
Just at that moment someone in the store decided to turn on the sound system and a song came on on the store's speakers. The song began with the words:

On the wings of a snow-white dove
He sends His pure sweet love
A sign from above (sign from above)
On the wings of a dove (wings of a dove)

When troubles surround us, when evils come
The body grows weak (body grows weak)
The spirit grows numb (spirit grows numb)
When these things beset us, He doesn't forget us
He sends down His love (sends down His love)
On the wings of a dove (wings of a dove)

Needless to say I felt a little thrill of the mysterious, of some kind of an answer to prayer in my life but more than anything else it gave me such a feeling of poverty as to knowing what I can do.
What good is a sign if you can't feel that you are partaking of the substance? I guess I tried in my little way by looking gently and compassionatly into whatever eyes met mine but the sign that I wasn't given was a sign that my life was in any way a blessing to those around me. Pretty selfish on my part eh?
That experience did push me toward the direction of wondering what the Hasid meant about making the everyday holy.

[jimbo]

l:

[jimbo]

is any











and He is calling you

[lizzytysh]

Thank you for joining in on this thread, Jimbo. I was glad to see that Jack is back and has begun contributing here, againm rested and returned from his retreat.

This thread took its own rest, as you know, since you've said you've been reading here awhile. It's good to see it showing its re-energizing. Welcome to the Forum and looking forward to seeing your own contributions here.


~ Lizzy

[jimbo]

thank

[tomsakic]

I myself am very obsessed by theme of Holocaust in literature and arts in general, and I can't recall did I mention this to you, Doron, in this thread or somewhere else (Holocaust was anyhow much referred to in my Cohen article I mentioned earlier in this thread [now probably in Pt 1 or 2], which was published 3 weeks ago). Putting the text of 12th prayer aside for a little, I must say I did not connect this piece with the Holocaust, but I will hang on that for a while, as I always admired L. Cohen as one of the greatest writers who deals with the Holocaust. It's even so that, 60 years later, and 20 years after Dance Me To The End Of Love, Holocaust appears as on of the themes in the Book of Longing.

Recalling Primo Levi's motto from the first page of Flowers for Hitler, much ink was spent on Adorno's quotation in terms of Leonard's work; in both existing "readers", Intricate Preparations: Writing Leonard Cohen and The Proceedings Of The Leonard Cohen Conference there are essays about Holocaust in novels and Flowers for Hitler. For now...

[Simon]

It seems I cannot react rationally to this one. I find it very powerfull. The rythm, the strong images...
All I can say is that for some reason it evoqued something of Lorca.

do not separate me from my tears
Lc

soy la sombra inmensa de mis lágrimas
I am the intense shadows of my tears
Lorca

Gacela of the Dark Death

I want to sleep the dream of the apples,
to withdraw from the tumult of cemetries.
I want to sleep the dream of that child
who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.

I don't want to hear again that the dead do not lose their blood,
that the putrid mouth goes on asking for water.
I don't want to learn of the tortures of the grass,
nor of the moon with a serpent's mouth
that labors before dawn.

I want to sleep awhile,
awhile, a minute, a century;
but all must know that I have not died;
that there is a stable of gold in my lips;
that I am the small friend of the West wing;
that I am the intense shadows of my tears.

Cover me at dawn with a veil,
because dawn will throw fistfuls of ants at me,
and wet with hard water my shoes
so that the pincers of the scorpion slide.

For I want to sleep the dream of the apples,
to learn a lament that will cleanse me to earth;
for I want to live with that dark child
who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.


GACELA DE LA MUERTE OSCURA

Quiero dormir el sueño de las manzanas
alejarme del tumulto de los cementerios.
Quiero dormir el sueño de aquel niño
que quería cortarse el corazón en alta mar.

No quiero que me repitan que los muertos no pierden la sangre;
que la boca podrida sigue pidiendo agua.
No quiero enterarme de los martirios que da la hierba,
ni de la luna con boca de serpiente
que trabaja antes del amanecer.

Quiero dormir un rato,
un rato, un minuto, un siglo;
pero que todos sepan que no he muerto;
que haya un establo de oro en mis labios;
que soy un pequeño amigo del viento Oeste;
que soy la sombra inmensa de mis lágrimas.

Cúbreme por la aurora con un velo,
porque me arrojará puñados de hormigas,
y moja con agua dura mis zapatos
para que resbale la pinza de su alacrán.

Porque quiero dormir el sueño de las manzanas
para aprender un llanto que me limpie de tierra;
porque quiero vivir con aquel niño oscuro
que quería cortarse el corazón en alta mar.


Federico García Lorca

[lazariuk]

I.12

Direct me out of this, O magnet of the falling cherry petals. Make a truce between my disgust and the impeccable landscape of fields and milky towns.

What stands out to me in this prayer are the words "magnet of the falling cherry petals" and there is a reason for that. One that needs a truce.
I get a sense sometimes that the source of much of the distance I place between myself and others and what may be the source of a lot of the hostility in the world is the agrument we are having about who has the best invisible friend. Mine is gravity and so I look at "magnet of the falling cherry petals" to be in line with " the gravity of your name" but where the disgust comes in is when I see myself trying to convince someone else of the superiority of my way of seeing things and often in a way that keeps me divided from the other half of this perfect world. The other half being "the impeccable landscape of fields and milky towns"

or in other words

The polished hill
The milky town
Transparent, weightless, luminous
Uncovering the two of us
On that fundamental ground
Where love’s unwilled, unleashed, unbound
And half the perfect world is found

The place where we actually meet and where our ideas are unimportant because it is there where we are really giving and getting.

It might be in places like here where we are looking at Leonard's prayers that truces are discovered.

[lizzytysh]

Great to see you back and active in this discussion, Simon... and I believe I told you that, too, Jack... right? [No need to answer... it's rhetorical, either way.]


~ Lizzy