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!”