Selah poems on Hello Poetry

Nat Lipstadt Apr 2016

Selah

~~~

is a word used seventy-four times in the bible.  The meaning of the word is not known, though various interpretations are given below.  It is probably an instruction on the reading of the text, something like *"stop and listen."  The Amplified Bible translates selah as "pause, and think of that." Alternatively, selah may mean "forever," as it does in some places in the liturgy.  Another interpretation claims that selah comes from the primary Hebrew root word salah, meaning "to hang," and by implication, as in weighing, "to measure"

for Sethnicity
~~~

what trifle these
modern words,
hurled, expelled from the
no country for an old body,
without passport or
earnestness of purpose

the yeah yeah yeah filler
of day tourists who
leave~refuse,
leave their refuse,
never mark-making,
nor even  a mark of
minor distinctions

what mystery valued then in these
olden words,
of which,
there are the fewer than
precious few,
possessing
ineffable, multifarious meanings,
never wasted or with dispassion disgraced

Selah

as a young boy
parentally captive
was POW forced-marched
to synagogue daily,
then weekly,
and now,
free at last,
Oh Lord
free at last,

to go
never

now wanting immunity
for my sins
but asking only from myself
my own forgiveness,
still and well recall the
puzzlingly feeling of

Selah

"forever"
explained the perpetually tired,
older father-man,
"it means forever,"
he who was wearily forever tired from voyaging
and living in a new, stressful,
inhospitable world

carrying in a single suitcase(1)
centuries of the continental drift of
global dispersal diaspora prior,
that cannot be well remembered,
only honored in the
forever recalling

but I disdain the explanation,
as if
"forever"
would satisfy
a ne're satisfied,
irreverent, teenage curiosity

here I am
decades on,
remembering the mysterious

Selah

embracing its many personalities,
endearing now by its revealing opportunities,
and its suitability
in this,
in the the hour of
now me as the
elder father-grandfather

weary-leery,
of a man's age of aging,
the approaching visible runway,
upon which you only land
and never takeoff,
during the phasing out period

and so I reconsider

Selah

and all its variants,
seventy four times

all those elders know too well,
there was never a

forever

so you
stop and listen,
but not to your own heartbeats,
but to tue

poetic lapsing pauses,

the in betweens,
thinking on that
hope for next one Nat

taking your own measure,
the hanging up,
the weighing up
of the always imbalanced
credits and deficits,
accepting the net net
sum of
the totaling up

yet once more,
despite all,
the poet rises,
stands up,
stops to listen,
to give blessing to
you the reader

all poet's
welcomed progeny and prodigy,
hearing your crying hearts,
youngest wishes
and grinding familia of
familiar fears,
expressed so clear
in all your scripts,
pronouncing
over them,
over you

Amen ~ Selah

once again ,
one last time
telling it to God,
or anyone who'll listen,
with fervor

smiling inward
believing even more now
in the olden
specialized mysterious,
powers
of a word
that means
exactly what you meant it
to mean,
when  your say

Selah*

Oct 2, 2015

a poem written and stored away from a sense of
who will get this weary wariness... but I let it go because
it was
selah time

for Sethnicity

(1). he was a Fuller Brush Man

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