FOUR O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

At four in the morning poets, lovers and madmen suspect
that the life of the mirror is the mold of the soul –
depth will shatter if they dare to pierce the luminous image.  
A white drove of jellyfish is borne to the shore –
(they were once as sweet as the quince fairy,
in bathing suits, mortal, half-naked and arrogant all summer long.  
A hundred years’ fear locked in transparent bodies moving toward revenge).
The gates rise to let us in at dawn, with poles or scepters,
halos cracked or missing, we awaken.

Still in the hidden recesses, in the belly of the whale,
carved out of sleep, you are perfect as a wooden boy,
but breathing – knowing you are caught in a storm
and breath by breath fending off what follows.

There’s no escaping light, the inanimate fills with memory,
we sort ourselves, no longer an element among elements,
creatures of wind and fire, but human,
yellow-eyed animals counting
what is, what has been and what remains.

I met you naked at midnight – at the edge of the hours,
where one body is exchanged for another,
pumpkins and kingdom rising from a chariot,
the orange-white stone daisies of the moon
burst into flames in our hands,
and the whisper of growth lends speech to the sea stars,
resembling the celestial bodies in their sweetness –
there, between ground and space,
all that the soul learns about itself will be Knowledge,

science eager to hurl metaphors at black holes
whose nothingness will spew overnight
an exact mathematical notation
of loss.

Your face fills with years, pink and soft the girl’s face vanishes
submerged inside the man.  
It isn’t I who will touch you.  The light,
the light without refuge, will shake us.  
Round-eyed clay figures,
we will turn  away at the edge of an abundant universe,

startled by all we love.

FOUR O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

{poemcopy}2005, Sharron Hass
{poemcopy2}From: Netiney ha-shemesh
Publisher: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2005/poemcopy}