SNAKE

SNAKE

SNAKE

When the snake bit  
Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa  
while he was praying

the snake died. (Each day  
is attended by surprises  
or it is nothing.)

Question: was the bare-footed,  
smelly Rabbi more poisonous  
than the snake

or so God-adulterated  
he’d become immune  
to serpent poison?

Oh great-great-great-uncles,  
your palms weighing air,  
why are you arguing?

Listen, the snake thought  
(being old and unwell  
and bad-tempered as hell)

Death, where’s thy sting?  
In short, was just testing:  
a snake’s last fling.

Yes, the so-called snake
was dying anyway, its heart  
calcified and as old as Eden.

No, that snake was A1 fit  
but while hissing for fun it  
clumsily bit its own tongue.

No, Hanina invented that snake;  
not for his own sake but for first-
class, religious publicity.

No no, here’s the key to it.  
Ask: did the Rabbi, later on,  
become a jumpy, timid man?

Remember, he who has been bitten  
by a snake thereafter becomes  
frightened of a rope …

Bearded men in darkening rooms  
sipping lemon tea and arguing  
about the serpent till the moon

of Russia, of Latvia, Lithuania,  
Poland, rose above the alien  
steeples—centuries of sleep.

Now, tonight, a clean-shaven rabbi  
who once studied in Vienna  
says snake-venom contains

haemolysins, haemo-
coagulants, protolysins,  
cytolysins and neurotoxins

and that even in Hanina
ben Dosa’s day a snake was a  
snake—unless, of course, it was

a penis, an unruly penis,  
making a noise like one pissing  
on a mound of fresh hot ashes.

Oh great-great-great-uncles
did you hear him? And are your  
handbones weighing moonshine?



New and Collected Poems
Hutchinson
2003