I have not reached for

Silence.

I reach for love and lo, I find

Cold calculus of

Silence.

I may not reach for the apple of

Eve's dissension,

Sit in a

Silence which is

God's

And not my own; I may not reach for

Antigone's autonomous sword, pace in the

Silence of those

Wedding lords of dark waters;

Echo may not find me, weeping,

Hating the silence which is not weeping;

Silence.

Decay and Understanding masquerade as

Silence;

Sing through

Silence.

The silence of Love is not a silence of

Death or of Life but of autocratic

Silence.

Facing love and

Silence

Man and child are silent.

God, woeful starmaker,

Spreads his hands and sighs at the

Vicissitude of silence.

Creation stills at her disorder and is

Silent.

Even Earth cannot contain you,

Much less a temple I could build. And yet—

How like Lebanese forests you make me. My lips

Become a roof, my arm a wall;

From Woman you architect a Synagogue.

My love’s wine replaces my unreliable water. Of my

Own reflection I retract husbandry. It is a cistern

Which cannot hold water.

Man and child become Man and

Facing love we all become children.

Limbs rise and fall under white sheets in

Tandem, Man and Woman,

Building a Synagogue, clamoring Hosanna

For the Gardens they have chosen.

Limbs rise to build, if not a monument,

A small and focused flame.

Limbs fall to the warmth of an altar

In defense against that last white sheet, death.