Selected Poems of Solomon

Intro

“When the educated man of understanding considers the study of astron-omy, and thinks of the tremendous dimensions of the spheres and the swiftness of their movement, his soul longs to ascend to those spheres and to see them with his very own eyes. This, however, it cannot do, on account of the weight of the body. But when the soul separates itself from the body, and is not held back by its wicked doings, its harmful attributes, and its great ignorance, it arrives there in an instant, with the blink of an eye.“ Source: Muslim Epistles of the Brethren of Purity Can the body be integrated somehow? Can there be harmony? Is separation necessary? “And don’t be astonished by a man whose flesh / has longed for wisdom and prevailed; / He’s soul encircling physique, / and a sphere in which all is held.” — Gabirol Body ensouled. Hold all in the palm of your hand. The fountain of life implies “the process of creation is continuous and ongoing at all levels at all time in a universal chain of transformation reaching from that pure source to the lowest point of the cosmos and back up to its unknowable origin.” Matter takes on form as a body takes on clothing. “It is impossible for matter to have any reality without form, for it does not take on existence unless it is dressed in form.” “He longs to give form to the formless, / as a lover longs for his friend. …” —

The Field

… The wind beat at the sheets of rain, and the clouds were cut into threads reaching down into the world below—drenching ridges, preparing the furrows for sowing.

On the hills, hidden grasses emerged like secrets a man had long withheld: all winter the clouds wept until suddenly life again swept through the trees of the field. —

The Lightning

… I witnessed the wonders of God when my eyes saw the clouds shedding their tears as the garden began to sparkle. They scattered their drops like blood being dashed at the altar,

inking designs on the blossoms’ skin in settings of crimson and linen-like whiteness. Then the beds of herbs offered a scent like myrrh before the clouds that had burst. — Your soul strains and you sigh … Weaken the feeble who weigh on me more than all the stones of the world; … they’ve been busy with rest and sloth and have reached its delights by chance alone. … If wisdom is small in your eyes, in hers you’re nothing at all; she’s obscure and distant to you because your hearts have long been enclosed in their cauls. … —

The Tree

(Banger, ends strong too…) … The Lord created this people mindless and fashioned its bulls without any horns, and every boor now puffs himself up as though by right of just having-been-born: they set their hearts after wealth alone, and worship gold in place of the Lord, but my God has a day when the stubborn and false will be like stubble within a great storm— and the honest before him will exult and prevail while the insolent wither and fail. — The kite … See the affliction and work of your servant whose soul is like a kite in a snare—

and I’ll live as your slave forever and ever, and seek no freedom beyond your command. —

I love you

I love you with the love a man has for his only son— with his heart and his soul and his might; and I take great pleasure in your mind as you take the mystery on of the Lord’s act in creation— though the issue is distant and deep, and who could approach its foundation?

But I’ll tell you something I’ve heard and let you dwell on its strangeness: sages have said that the secret of all being owes all to the all who has all in hand: He longs to give form to the formless as a lover longs for his friend. And this is, maybe, what the prophets meant when they said that he worked all for his own exaltation.

I’ve offered you these words— now show me how you’ll raise them. —

Before my being

Before my being your mercy came through me, bringing existence to nothing to shape me. Who is it conceived of my form— and who cast it then in a kiln to create me? Who breathed soul inside me and who opened the belly of hell and withdrew me? Who through youth brought me this far? Who with wisdom and wonder endowed me? I’m clay cupped in your hands, it’s true; it’s you, I know, not I who made me. I’ll confess my sin and will not say the serpent’s ways, or evil seduced me. How could I hide my error from you when before my being your mercy came through me? —

Two things meet in me

Two things meet in me, alike in kind, … My spirit and soul in your praise are entwined… — My thoughts asked me … To the god of my life, my desire’s desire, whom my soul and flesh long to be near. —

He dwells forever

He dwells forever, exalted, alone, and no one comes near him whose kingdom is One— from the light of his garment he fashioned his world within three words that are sealed. … He’s prime to all primes— … He fashioned all with a blemishless word; he alone leads, he’s instantly heard; the Lord carries all without growing weary— within their own wisdom he captures the wise. … He says: Let there be… and it is by his might: All that’s hidden he brings to light. … Let there be… allowing being to come into existence. When we embody this disposition of ‘allowing’ in a similar way, we atone with God? —

I’ve made you my refuge

… Your oneness I sought at the door to the poem … The sublime oneness that precedes, inspires the poem… — I take great pleasure … The heavens cannot contain your power; how might my thought give it shape or form? Grant me discernment and honesty’s grace— and my will, soon, will bend to yours. … —

Kingdom’s Crown

Part 1

I

… Yours is the strength within whose mystery our minds eventually fail; … yours the Name that eludes the wise, and the might to bear the world in its void, and the craft to bring what’s hidden to light.

Yours is the kindness that infuses creation, and the goodness veiled for those who hold you in awe. … yours is the real which becomes existence in light’s reflection and in whose shadow we live; … yours the reward reserved for the righteous in spirit for whom it was hidden:

You saw it was good and concealed it…

Good as concealed, so the righteous must work to reveal it… if nothing was concealed, all would have access, righteous or unrighteous. Describes matter as fashioned in form, longing to become the supreme form. Is this dressing, fashioning a simultaneous unconcealing?..

II

… You are One, and your oneness’s mystery amazes the wise, who’ve never known what it was. … You are One, and my speech can’t establish your boundary or line, therefore I said I would guard my ways, so as not to sin with my tongue. …

III

You abide beyond the range of the ear in its hearing and the eye in its seeing, ungoverned by how and where and when. … You abide, and your form’s obscure and beyond detection and deeper than all revelation…

IV

You are alive, though not established in time, and not of a time that’s known.

You are alive, though not in spirit and soul: for you’re the soul to spirit’s soul. …

VII

You are the light of the upper regions, and the eye of every soul that’s pure will take you in—

and the clouds of sin in the sinner’s soul will obscure you.

Your invisible light in the world will be seen in the world to come … Invisible light. I like this.

VIII

… You are Lord, and every creature serves you as slave and nothing detracts from your glory, not those who worship without you— for the drive of all is to reach you—

although they resemble men who are blind, walking along the way of the king and going astray

sinking in the pit of destruction,

slipping in the trap of deception—

certain they’ll teach their haven, as each one labors in vain. … All is a single mystery:

though its name might alter in aspects, all toward a single place move on…

Mmm…the multifaceted nature of god, or our limited perception of it divides/variates what is One. Reminds me of the Gita

IX

You are wise, and wisdom is a fountain and source of life welling up from within you,

and men are too coarse to know you. … You are wise, and your wisdom gave rise to an endless desire in the world as within an artist or worker—

to bring out the stream of existence from Nothing, like light flowing flowing from sight’s extension—

drawing from the source of that light without vesse, giving it shape without tools, hewing and carving, refining and making it pure:

He called to Nothing—which split; to existence—pitched like a tent; to the world—as it spread beneath sky. …

X

… The wheel of the wind you established over the sea, which it circles in circuits, as the wheel of it rests in that circling… … and then through a fourfold font diverge. Wow…the circuitous motion of air described, weather patterns of the seas, wonderful. The fourfold font is the primary elements: earth, water, wind, fire.

XI

… and the moon’s lamp soon goes dim—

so all of the creatures on earth might know that heaven’s creatures, though powerful, are governed in their rise and decline, though after its fall the moon lives on, lit in the wake of its darkness. … then the moon as well will pass, dark before the sun like a cloud, blocking its light from our eyes

so all who see them will know… … that a Lord exists above them to darken the light they’re given. … …those who think of the sun as their Lord will surely be brought to shame, as their words will soon be tested; … that the sun has no dominion, and that he who lessens its light rules on his own.

In return for all of its kindness, he sends it a slave of its slaves who cancels its light— to destroy her abominable image and remove her as queen from her throne.

XII - XXIV

Describes ten circles. The first is God’s throne (?), then ascends celestially from planet to planet, eventually reaching the intelligence that moves the cosmos, and then, on the 10th rung, the mind. The tenth to the Lord is always sacred.

This is the highest ring, transcending all elevation and beyond all ideation. … its reality derives from your power;

its longing is from you and for you, and toward you ascends its desire.

XXV

Who comprehends your thinking in transforming the radiance of intellect’s sphere into a glow of souls and spirits on high? … holding the flaming sword that revolves every which way—

as they work in all manner, wherever the spirit moves them … that you it was who gave us form— not we our own—

that we are the work of your hand.

The mind as a “flaming sword that revolves in every which way.” Illuminating and dividing/discriminating. Wonderful analogy. Philo described the swords as a symbol for divine reason/the logos: ever moving and rotating in all directions… The intellect seems to fit with the sword, but the flaming part and its illumination implies some revealing/enlightening of unity between what is sliced…

XXIV

Who could approach the place of your dwelling, in your raising up over the sphere of mind the Throne of Glory in the fields of concealment and splendor, at the source of the secret and matter, where the mind reaches and yields? … Above the mind, but also below (?) the mind, is the Lord. The flow enfolds, the fount enfolds.

XXVII

… This is the range of pure soul raveled in the bond of all that’s vital. For those who’ve worked to exhaustion— this is the place of their strength’s renewal… …

XXXI

… You’ve shut us inside your world, while you look in from beyond and observe;

and all that we try to conceal

within or without you reveal.

Only he may conceal. Not us. He is the concealer and revealer?

XXXII

… …a mind to grasp but the edge of your mystery, … and these are only the borders of your ways which are greater by far in sum and life to those who find them…

XXXV

(Might be my favourite…whole thing slaps)

My face fell when I thought, my God, of the ways I’ve made you angry—

for all the good you accord me I offer you only transgression.

You didn’t need to create me— it was only Magnanimity—

not an act of Necessity— but an act of Love and Will.

Before my being you established your Mercy and gave me life with your Spirit-sent-through-me; and after I entered the air of the world you did not leave me:

with a father’s compassion you raised me; like a child in its nursery you taught me; on my mother’s breast in me you put trust, and from your pleasure I learned to be pleased.

When I stood in my place you gave me courage, in your arms you took me and taught me to walk;

and you gave me instruction and wisdom; from distress and trouble you saved me, and when anger came on you concealed me behind the shadow of your right hand.

How much trouble my eyes have overlooked as you helped me; and before it came on you’d prepared a healing and did not strike me down.

When my vigilance failed you watched over me. When I came to the mouth of the lion and entered, you broke its jaws and withdrew me.

I was ill with continual sickness— and you healed me.

When your harsh judgment came into the world, from the path of the sword you removed me; from plague you spared me; in famine you fed me; and I flourished in all that I did…

When I made you angry, as a man rebukes his son you rebuked me, and in my sorrow I called:

If my life in your eyes is of value, do not turn me empty away.

Above all this you’ve done more, in giving me perfect faith to believe that you are the God of truth— that your way is the truth and your prophets are real.

And you kept me away from your enemies, as they blasphemed mocking your book of the law, and pursuing those who serve you; denying the prophets who speak of you.

They feign innocence, and cultivate guile; pretend to be pure as they hide their corruption— like a vessel full of shame and confusion,

scrubbed without with the water of falseness, while all that’s within is defiled.

XXVII

… for if I depart from the world as I entered, and naked and empty return as I came, why was I made— or called to bear witness to struggle and pain? … From the time he emerges from his mother’s womb his nights are grief and his days a sigh; if he’s lifted one day in fortune— his fortune’s worms are bred by dawn. … He prays in sorrow and multiplies words, slickens his talk and piles up vows … and strengthens the bars on his doors, while death in his room is lurking.

He increases the number of guards about him; but the ambush will come from within—

his fence won’t stop the wolves come for their lamb… …

XL

… Loving-kindness is yours in all the good you’ve done me,

and until I die will do… … May you be…known as One by those who seek to know you in oneness … May the words of my mouth and my heart’s meditation before you be pleasing—

my rock—

and my redemption.