An Adage Concerning a Man and an Old Book

Spring, but the day wasdark with rain and sleet.

Over the pillars of nightlike a cat, grief

climbed and frightened every street.

Solitary in my room I sat,leafing

an ancient tome, when like a crown

through the gloom of centuries dead

an adage gleamed, proud though old.

I didn’t greet thedream—not with a silver tray

and not with salt or bread.

Nor did the adage flashlike lightning through my sleep,

nor did it sit at the head of my bed

in the first light of dawn,

with knives in its eyes of judgment and punishment,

nor did it gnaw like sulfur night and day.

And I partnered the springin the dance of the day,

and my stick wrote gladness on the warm sands,

and sorrow did not drip into my food.

A Jew, heavy and blind likea cloud, and covered with blood,

dragged along a wall, unable to find his house,

while laughter rippled the hair of torturers on alark,

and my street fled, small and fleet as a mouse,

And the trees stood erectlike hunters’ guns in the park.

But the dawn felt no shameand neither did the noon,

and the sun towered over the town in its crown ofgold,

and not in sun, not in tree, and not in me

did the old-book-wordsburn, “Man is a fragment of God.”