William Heyen-lI

Shekhinah

 

 

in a wood.

In my dream she stood in an open area

A machine that looked

 

through roots

like a huge scorpion cut a ditch

behind her, her aura

 

snapped into her,

wavered, she became candleflame, a bullet

she fell into the ditch

 

over her,

& sputtered out. The scorpion pulled earth

at the same time stinging her grave repeatedly….

 

but I do keep

Mine is usually a sensibility of body & money,

a candle lit beside my easy chair,

 

that I experience

& do write in my diary of the glimmer of spirit

almost daily. I pray to primal powers

 

who are many.

that I be worthy of all those who love & need me,

Nor am I resigned

 

who set it into motion

that a dreamed scorpion or hidden perpetrators

killed beauty forever,

 

stinging the grave

but that machine out of my psyche kept

of the mother who spoke in tongues,

 

bathed them

who fed the Jews with milk & candleflame,

in story & balm. As for me

 

or it came to power

I was either born with this scorpion within,

by way of the holy

 

but whatever it is

which itself is terrified by that which came to be,…

that I’ve just now said,

 

a study of the Holocaust diary:

consider David Patterson in Along the Edge of Annihilation,

“Exceeding the horror

 

waited until many

“of slaughtering pregnant mothers, it seems that the Nazis

of these women held their babies

 

this being the brutal essence

in their arms before murdering them and their infants with them,”…

of “the ontological nature

 

engraved in my dream,

“of the assault on the mothers of Israel”—the one

the one that this German machine

 

Katzelson cries out,

keeps electrocuting through the sod: verily, diarist Yitzhak

“This murdrous German nation!

 

women

“That was their chief joy! To destroy

with child!”