To-night retired, the queen of heaven
  With young Endymion stays;
And now to Hesper it is given
Awhile to rule the vacant sky,
Till she shall to her lamp supply
  A stream of brighter rays.

Propitious send thy golden ray,
  Thou purest light above!
Let no false flame ****** to stray
Where gulf or steep lie hid for harm;
But lead where music’s healing charm
  May soothe afflicted love.

To them, by many a grateful song
  In happier seasons vow’d,
These lawns, Olympia’s haunts, belong:
Oft by yon silver stream we walk’d,
Or fix’d, while Philomela talk’d,
  Beneath yon copses stood.

Nor seldom, where the beechen boughs
  That roofless tower invade,
We came, while her enchanting Muse
The radiant moon above us held:
Till, by a clamorous owl compell’d,
  She fled the solemn shade.

But hark! I hear her liquid tone!
  Now Hesper guide my feet!
Down the red marl with moss o’ergrown,
Through yon wild thicket next the plain,
Whose hawthorns choke the winding lane
  Which leads to her retreat.

See the green space: on either hand
  Enlarged it spreads around:
See, in the midst she takes her stand,
Where one old oak his awful shade
Extends o’er half the level mead,
  Enclosed in woods profound.

Hark! how through many a melting note
  She now prolongs her lays:
How sweetly down the void they float!
The breeze their magic path attends;
The stars shine out; the forest bends;
  The wakeful heifers graze.

Whoe’er thou art whom chance may bring
  To this sequester’d spot,
If then the plaintive Siren sing,
O softly tread beneath her bower
And think of Heaven’s disposing power,
  Of man’s uncertain lot.

O think, o’er all this mortal stage
  What mournful scenes arise:
What ruin waits on kingly rage;
How often virtue dwells with woe;
How many griefs from knowledge flow;
  How swiftly pleasure flies!

O sacred bird! let me at eve,
  Thus wandering all alone,
Thy tender counsel oft receive,
Bear witness to thy pensive airs,
And pity Nature’s common cares,
  Till I forget my own.

My new-cut ashlar takes the light
  Where crimson-blank the windows flare;
By my own work, before the night,
  Great Overseer, I make my prayer.

If there be good in that I wrought,
  Thy hand compell’d it, Master, Thine;
Where I have fail’d to meet Thy thought
  I know, through Thee, the blame if mine.

One instant’s toil to Thee denied
  Stands all Eternity’s offence;
Of that I did with Thee to guide
  To Thee, through Thee, be excellence.

Who, lest all thought of Eden fade,
  Bring’st Eden to the craftsman’s brain,
Godlike to muse o’er his own trade
  And manlike stand with God again.

The depth and dream of my desire,
  The bitter paths wherein I stray,
Thou knowest Who hast made the Fire,
  Thou knowest Who hast made the Clay.

One stone the more swings to her place
  In that dread Temple of Thy worth—
It is enough that through Thy grace
  I saw naught common on Thy earth.

Take not that vision from my ken;
  O, whatsoe’er may spoil or speed,
Help me to need no aid from men,
  That I may help such men as need!

Whom does this stately Navy bring?
O! ‘tis Great Britain's Glorious King,
Convey him then, ye Winds and Seas,
Swift as Desire and calm as Peace.
In your Respect let him survey
What all his other Subjects pay;
And prophesie to them again
The splendid smoothness of his Reign.
Charles and his mighty hopes you bear:
A greater now then Cæsar's here;
Whose Veins a richer Purple boast
Then ever Hero's yet engrost;
Sprung from a Father so august,
He triumphs in his very dust.
In him two Miracles we view,
His Vertue and his Safety too:
For when compell'd by Traitors crimes
To breathe and bow in forein Climes,
Expos'd to all the rigid fate
That does on wither'd Greatness wait,
Had plots for Life and Conscience laid,
By Foes pursu'd, by Friends betray'd;
Then Heaven, his secret potent friend,
Did him from Drugs and Stabs defend;
And, what's more yet, kept him upright
‘Midst flattering Hope and bloudy Fight.
Cromwell his whole Right never gain'd,
Defender of the Faith remain'd,
For which his Predecessors fought
And writ, but none so dearly bought.
Never was Prince so much beseiged,
At home provok'd, abroad obliged;
Nor ever Man resisted thus,
No not great Athanasius.
No help of Friends could, or Foes spight,
To fierce Invasion him invite.
Revenge to him no pleasure is,
He spar'd their bloud who gap'd for his;
Blush'd any hands the English Crown
Should fasten on him but their own.
As Peace and Freedom with him went,
With him they came from Banishment.
That he might his Dominions win,
He with himself did first begin:
And that best victory obtain'd,
His Kingdom quickly he regain'd.
Th' illustrious suff'rings of this Prince
Did all reduce and all convince.
He onely liv'd with such success,
That the whole world would fight with less.
Assistant Kings could but subdue
Those Foes which he can pardon too.
He thinks no Slaughter-trophees good,
Nor Laurels dipt in Subjects blood;
But with a sweet resistless art
Disarms the hand, and wins the heart;
And like a God doth rescue those
Who did themselves and him oppose.
Go, wondrous Prince, adorn that Throne
Which Birth and Merit make your own;
And in your Mercy brighter shine
Then in the Glories of your Line:
Find Love at home, and abroad Fear,
And Veneration every where.
Th' united world will you allow
Their Chief, to whom the English bow:
And Monarchs shall to yours resort,
As Sheba's Queen to Judah's Court;
Returning thence constrained more
To wonder, envy, and adore.
Disgusted Rome will hate your Crown,
But she shall tremble at your Frown.
For England shall (rul'd and restor'd by You)
The suppliant world protect, or else subdue.

Though thou did’st hear the tempest from afar,
And felt’st the horrors of the wat’ry war,
To me unknown, yet on this peaceful shore
Methinks I hear the storm tumultuous roar,
And how stern Boreas with impetuous hand
Compell’d the Nereids to usurp the land.
Reluctant rose the daughters of the main,
And slow ascending glided o’er the plain,
Till ****** in his rapid chariot drove
In gloomy grandeur from the vault above:
Furious he comes.  His winged sons obey
Their frantic sire, and madden all the sea.
The billows rave, the wind’s fierce tyrant roars,
And with his thund’ring terrors shakes the shores:
Broken by waves the vessel’s frame is rent,
And strows with planks the wat’ry element.
  But thee, Maria, a kind Nereid’s shield
Preserv’d from sinking, and thy form upheld:
And sure some heav’nly oracle design’d
At that dread crisis to instruct thy mind
Things of eternal consequence to weigh,
And to thine heart just feelings to convey
Of things above, and of the future doom,
And what the births of the dread world to come.
  From tossing seas I welcome thee to land.
“Resign her, Nereid,” ’twas thy God’s command.
Thy spouse late buried, as thy fears conceiv’d,
Again returns, thy fears are all reliev’d:
Thy daughter blooming with superior grace
Again thou see’st, again thine arms embrace;
O come, and joyful show thy spouse his heir,
And what the blessings of maternal care!

The air is brittle this ominous, wintry night.

The slivers of a life you used to know still haunt you, as surely as you have permitted them to be a haunt to others.

Without question, it is those memories that spur your ruminations; that cause your copious circumlocutions; which compell you to stand on this somber boulevard in front of this crumbling, but once stately manor that now is a languid presence with the solitary purpose of looming over the vast grounds.

It is obligatory that you proceed along the avenue that used to split the yards that are now overgrown and chocoblock with twisted vines, and thistles.

You pause, to gather your strength.
One deep inhailation and then you hold your breath as you grip the tarnished handle and lock leaver.

With a perfect degree of strength your thumb recalls, the mechanism is undone.

Your arm pushes forward.

The silence is disturbed by a warbling creak as the heavy door is slowly opened.

You exhale, then before you lose your nerve you quickly pass through the ingress and enter into the foyer,
which is instantly familiar in the dim, flickering light and the long, slender adumbrations effected by the gossamer encaked voltives jutting from the dusty walls.

Though it has remaned unchanged  
throughout all the time that has passed, standing in the ornate room affirms that the warmth with which you used to be recieved here has been abandoned to a frigidity.

You feel as if this room remembers you.

This is as far as I dare go with you, my friend, though I know you must continue.

I have listened to your stories, so
I know you have many rooms to search.

The closier that you seek is in a matter that is not my own.

I will depart upon rendering these words of warning:

When visiting the past,

As you daringly explore these often haralded halways,
Be careful what you leave behind.
Take caution not to lose yourself,
For a shadow lingers in the Suite Sublime.

a piece of you, in a different form.
a piece left over, from the storm.
in my existance,
came all the resistance.
shortly after, the roof caved in.
& with an end, we watched it begin.
daddy left, you stepped up.
an empty glass, you filled the cup.
little did we know, it had a leak.
it's dripping slowly, as we speak.
over bumps we built bridges, rocky roads we held hands.
next to me, by my side...you'd always stand.

then, my hero ****** up.
he spilt the cup.
but he wasn't to blame,
no guiltiness, no shame.
you mopped the floor,
and again..you poured.
the cup freshly filled...
until the next spill.
the crack grew longer,
our bond grew stronger.
but little by little,
it grew too brittle.

his pillows were fluffed.
mine came unstuffed.
his blankets were warm.
mine came torn.
his bed was made.
but, you see i was afraid.
he didn't come home.
my secret is left : unknown.

i hit a blindspot in your rearview mirror.
i tried to hit the wipers so you'd see clearer.
& i tried with all my might.
to get into your sight.
but he was standing there, in the headlights.
& you...flicked on your brights.
there, i stopped, i tumbled...i fell.
no mean to get up, no energy to compell.

so now, i'll try and help you understand,
why i only hold plastic cups in my hand.
i was tired of competing with the one who broke the cup.
and watching, everytime, as you filled it up.
i was tired of running, when he got to walk.
i was tired of staying silent, when he got to talk.
i didn't know you had to fail, in order to win.
i didn't know you had to say goodbye, in order to begin.

so sweet and so dark
so dark, the flesh of hers so sweet
as dark and deep as the roots of the tree
which bear the nectarine

eyes that may possess
Lucifer and her demons
to come out and dance
'round the campfire
to the rhythms
of her fiery Soul's burning caress

yet so ****** her beauty is to those who yearn
as she does not tempt those who love to burn
only stand there, before them
and simply say hello
from the depths below
where her infinite fires bellow
where she wields a boundless yell
in her eternal conquering of Hell

her beauty could never be expressed by me
and anyone who dared would die, surely
within the attempt itself, in a waste of breath
vain they are, misplacing their pride in her beauty-
'til death

shadows of her dancing through the woods
run through my dreams and compell me to die
I can feel her aching within me as I fall in love
with the way she moves as she dances, oh I'd die
oh I'd die-

as she dances as if there is no one around
as if, she aches for anyones presence
as if she'd only seen their faces, act as masks
hiding their souls from this Earths greatest distances
and so-
she is a ghost
and so-
I die, if only to fly
flip a coin
pull a rose pedal
***** my finger
give birth to metal
rise up from the ground
and raise Hell
just to have
a great story to tell
so she may sleep
a little softer
in the breath of Soul
I have to offer

so, you see
she is too beautiful for me


the beat of the drum
will never cease to come
it will drum
it will come
it will drum
it will come

oh I will drum
and she will come

so you see
she is too beautiful for me

for someone needs to beat on that drum
someone needs to beat on that God ****** drum

and this rhythm, may as well be my own heartbeat
for I would die to continue watching her dancing feet

Thou comest, much wept for: such a breeze
  Compell'd thy canvas, and my prayer
  Was as the whisper of an air
To breathe thee over lonely seas.

For I in spirit saw thee move
  Thro' circles of the bounding sky,
  Week after week: the days go by:
Come quick, thou bringest all I love.

Henceforth, wherever thou may'st roam,
  My blessing, like a line of light,
  Is on the waters day and night,
And like a beacon guards thee home.

So may whatever tempest mars
  Mid-ocean, spare thee, sacred bark;
  And balmy drops in summer dark
Slide from the ***** of the stars.

So kind an office hath been done,
  Such precious relics brought by thee;
  The dust of him I shall not see
Till all my widow'd race be run.

Welcome to mount hopeless
Where rocks tumble, crumble at your feet
Where ropes to carry you turn to ***** nooses
Leaving you with nothing but bruises.
Uncertainty holds you captive,
With fallen angels you'd never hope to meet.

Hard falls to the solid ground,
The hounds of hell compell you.
Create your monster from little white lies
Till it gleams with your webs of *******.
Lost, but never found
Your kind was born to lose.
Fuel your future with worn, tired sighs
Try your damnedest to forget it.

The skies are grey with fog
Blurred between the lines
Separating reality from your dreams
And the temperature drops
Along with your binds
And all that remains are the seams

Of a life once promised,
Of lungs that could feel
The summer breeze from
Beneath the trees, the fallen leaves
All the truth we compromised.

The metallic shine
Of the chopping waves reflected in my looking glass eyes
That had lost their shine
With the explosion of the sun
Many moons ago
Now I seek the woman the old crow has visited in  the corners
Of her smile and she gazes off for quite a long while, returning with some unseen bizarre entity of a thought you sensed she had forgotten or perhaps hidden from herself.
Now the rhythmic pedaling meant nothing just churning slowly churning
Briney water of the moment still left
untold water
rushes by in folds of fools gold as the elephant mountain geishas marched by in wind blow whispers of their former selves and both compell me to give them my undivided attention
but I'm still trying to
find my direction here
on land.

The collision between two passionate lips,
I miss holding onto the hips
and embrace the blazing feelings fuming beneath my ribs.
Take my breath away,
I mean take away my life,
look me deep in the eye,
get closer,
toe to toe,
knee to knee,
chest to chest,
listen to my heartbeat,
allow your eyes to compell me to shut my eyelids,
strike me dead with a passionate kiss,
let my soul elope into a secret place,
kiss me to death,
because there is eternal life in you kiss,
...

השואה גוססת...the Sho'ah is dying

©  STEPHAN PICKERING / חפץ ח"ם בן אברהם
30 Sivan 5778 / 13 June 2018
revised:
1 Tammuz 5758 / 14 June 2018
2 Tammuz 5778 / 15 June 2018
3 Tammuz 5778 / 16 June 2018

I.

and cantillated poetry -- memory being
automatic editing -- may not be enough.

what was not a reality
may never be a reality,
may never be a memory. soon,
survivors will be silent, and
the concierge of film and tape
and books will whisper
in library corridors.

the villanellesque windows of
constantly chanting 'disaster' and
'master' are shattering,
an amphigouri of shadows and
mirrors...

II.

I stand on the balconies of quantum
strings: Auschwitz made my
forebears more Yehu'dit than Moshe.

No one
bears witness for the
witness.
-- Paul Celan, 1971. Speech-grille
& selected poems [trans. Joachim
Neugrosche] (E.P. Dutton), 1-255 (241)

the horizon is grey, in
Poland 2018, the ash still creating
a haze, specks on the leaves,
the shoulders, the watch face on
my wrist having no hands...

III.

how is the memory of a paternal
relative kept 'alive'? she remains like
a flickering match growing fainter
in what will be a night of
receding possibilities,
shadows be-ing alongside
my own. I have one colour 1941
photograph of her.  like salt held
on the tongue
she is carried in my mind.

she would not, a decade later in
Rosemead, speak of the
Kingdom of Night.

one of the fading blue
numbers stamped (not tattoed)
on her left forearm in 1942 was
a four.

she would stare intently into
my eyes, turn her arm over,
the four becoming a chair...
it was Garcia Lorca in 1928 who said
'verde que te quiera verde'...

she loved green, even the green stained
gargoyles she was painting in Paris...
on a sidewalk caught up in a christianist
SS roundup 16 July 1942, the Rafle du
Velodrome d'Hiver, her painting
fingers crushed. soon she was on a
rattling box car in August 1942, sent
to the East...

she was gone in 2006...but her dreams
are still in me...

IV.

teaches Reb Ya'akov Glatshteyn...

Like a tiny candle over each grave,
a cry will burn,
each one for itself.
'I am I' --
thousands of slaughtered I's
will cry in the night:
'I am dead, unrecognized'.
-- Ya'akov Glatshteyn / Yankev Glatshteyn
/ Jacob Glatstein, 1987. 'I have never
been here before', p. 111 in: Ya'akov
Glatshteyn, 1987. Selected poems
of Yankev Glatshteyn [ed./trans. R.J. Fein]
(Jewish Publication Society), 1-215
[Yiddish & English]

V.

let us compell trolls among us
to remember that, at its peak,
their grandparents' vaticanist
Auschwitz was burning 12,000
of us every 24 hours...

when it was happening
sound still reaches us in 2018.

and yet.

when it was happening,
few were listening, but now it is
bashert / inevitable my soul
hears nothing else.

the 'orderly' minds of the
trolls among us are well-tended
cemeteries without
gravestones.

the fire escapes are covered
with psilocybin spores.

long after midnight, when the
darkened carnival is awake,
there are survivors at the
seder table awaiting the
Missing One return with Her
Sefer haZohar, pick up the
empty cup.

the underside of every leaf
is fear, shadows gathering
at the foot of our beds,
transforming gristle into haze,
made real by Hebrew letters
and syllables.

TO BE CONTINUED

'When I am in the darkness,
why do you intrude?'
-- Shabtai Zisel / 'Bob Dylan', 1978

*****



STEPHAN PICKERING / חפץ ח"ם בן אברהם
Torah אלילה Yehu'di Apikores / Philologia Kabbalistica Speculativa Researcher
לחיות זמן רב ולשגשג...לעולם לא עוד
THE KABBALAH FRACTALS PROJECT

IN PROGRESS: Shabtai Zisel benAvraham v'Rachel Riva:
davening in the musematic dark

Sins of my father, sins of my mother
sins of the daughter, or even sins of the brother,
your sins are not passed down to you, there merely just a choice,
a compelling one at that to do, but its only you who can really avoid,
my father sinned and my family as well,
I do not blame them for my mistakes,
although ive slipped through darkness and essence Ive let compell,
I have become a translucent shadow
this is experiences shape and experience shaped me well

It's not about how it looks
but how it makes you feel
It's all about how deep it hits you
How it compell you to think
It's about remenising memories
Or making new one
It's a pause in your routine
and to have time for yourself