LOVE

1.

I’m a man
who murdered love

simply
and with his own two hands

took
and snapped its neck
        like a lamb

and then, with his fee,
his slaughterer’s fee,

promptly turned
into

a groisser hocham
– a wise ass –

wise at night
and wise on his ass


– and so

there’s Cain and there’s Abel
and Joseph and Deborah
and Hamor the Shechemite

and finally

a kind of Aharon Eichmann

wandering around
with –
stuck  
in his back pocket –

all five scrolls

Lamentations and Ruth
The Song of Songs
  and so on

    but waiting
for the firing squad

it’s sublime

    my eyes

blinded by tears
to take the ringing
  bullets

like the 5
stars of The Bear

I pronounce

life
an act
of suicide

The New Testament

means
die and die

I can’t be
more specific

there’s no one
(truly no one)

to whom I’d explain
     the specifics

and whoever there is

to lend an ear
and listen

anyway
turns to nothing

I’m sobbing
over a neck so white

– it’s unbelievable,
unbelievable –

I swear
a neck as white
     as this one
    
has never existed

I told her:
D., even if they cut off your legs

(I called them “chips”)

I’ll love you

It was, in fact, a vow . . .

You know how far I’d go with her?

Even into apostasy
even into the PLO

I’d –
so I told her –
plain and simple

and all night
(every night)
kiss you

and I’m
   entirely capable
I mean it in all seriousness

of carrying out
just such a total kiss

I’m a man
who, gradually,

has learned

the arts of love

I never
once betrayed my wife

(before the marriage I went
two or three times to whores)

and that’s it –
afterwards
year after year,

patiently I’ve learned

      patience

I’m able,
how should I put it,

to care for

to care for any
creature requiring care

i.e.
I take into account

when I stare
at my beloved
the infant
the elder
(the entire design)

and the ill

which follows
from the healthy

and the foul
and the exhausting
and the recurrent

(which is to say:
     The Law)

so instead of saying

“D., look –

here’s the mezuzah,

bore
the awl through my ear”

kept to the fence

year after year
I’ve barked and barked

       at your beauty

I remember a poem
by Alcman –
on Astymeloisa:

“Astymeloisa
won’t answer me”
(ouden ameibetai)

“but she holds a garland,

she’s like a bright star
cut out of the sky”

and he adds

“like a golden bough,”
etc. (what a wonderful
           poet)

you – Astymeloisa!

my heart’s broken
with saying
(entirely despite myself)

that your nipples
are like thorns

why would
nipples of thorn

suddenly

shatter
a grown man’s life?

     and why
didn’t you listen

when I said:
D., come with me –

leave your husband,

for me, a man

who, from a mop

can trick
200 golden proverbs?

Half the night
I can’t fall asleep

(from desire)
my balls are sore

but I won’t beat off

thinking of Ixion

whom Zeus forgave
and took up

into the sky

where he fell
in love with Hera,

was deceived,

and inseminated
     the goddess –

it was only a cloud

and in the end

he was bound to a wheel
for all eternity

like me
bound to the wheel
    of thinking –

    bound to your name.


5.

From infant I’ve
turned into a fat man

my hair’s going gray
and becoming a kind of
          useless rag

when I eat
I run my tongue

along my dentures

on the other hand
I’m awfully young, and funny,
cordial, my hands are good

erotic – in the ancient sense,
               the daemonic –

and my back is strong
despite one lousy disc

I strained when, once,
I picked up a stone idiotically

My brother’s tanned legs
(he boasted of, philandered with)
are long since eaten whereas mine

mine are o.k. – last night I even dreamed
I was called in to play fullback

unfortunately my scrotum’s shot

(once it’d shrink up in the cold
like a crop)

and my penis I admire

fascinated by its white liquid
I’ve learned in my life to use it wisely

and your belly is like a levelled bowl
and at its tip are leaves of laurel

LOVE