from The Invention of Influence: Part One
“He saw a skull floating by on the water”
(water bearing the fathers and sons):
Hillel the Elder (father unknown) –
You drowned others and so were drowned,
and those who drowned you in time will be drowned.
The skull is Pharaoh’s, said one of the sons
of the sons, and who,
said another, drowned him?
*
A third rabbi demurred:
the skull floating by was a friend –
and one of the sons of the sons of the sons
thought of the father’s saying:
“Know where it is you come from
And where it is that you’re going
And before whom you will stand”
___
but everyone knows
what I’m thinking,
or what I’ve discovered
they’ve long known
because they set it
out for me,
because it was set
out for me
(the language we speak –
the language we seek –
is the language spoken
our words emerge
from beyond (within)
our innermost thoughts are foreign,
implanted with great cunning
Thus the outer
world of the inner
world that all can see
and that inner world of what’s beyond me –
it shames me
___
“Among the sacrifices ...
we must count
Dr Victor Tausk,” wrote Freud
“This rarely gifted man
a Vienna specialist in nervous diseases
who took his life
before peace was signed.”
Said one of the sons of one of the fathers,
in the name of Eliezer, and others:
Set your brother’s honour as yours –
within your name, feel his shame;
and be not easily angered –
anger coils in the hearts of fools;
The day before you die repent –
which always might mean now;
Warm your blood by the sages’ fire –
the tongues of which light worlds before you;
beware, though, of their glowing embers –
lest you be burned by wanting to know;
for their bite is the bite of the fox –
whose tricks will rip through flesh;
and their sting is that of a scorpion –
with pain so keen it sings;
and their hiss is the hiss of the serpent –
the saintly, too, have their venom;
and all their words are fiery coals –
with flames that, flickering, lick and maim.
April 1908, he writes:
We muster a tentative Yes to our life,
unsure of just how much we can give.
Little by little we master our doubts,
and begin addressing ourselves as a friend.
Gently fill the bowl to the brim,
or rather, let the bowl fill.
The task is to carry it, full, uphill.
___
There’s a strange step
behind the door –
It fills me.
I hear it all.
I feel the coldness of the wall.
The handle turns ...
And between the door and jamb,
a strange face – like mine ...
Vienna, February 18, 1909
American poet Peter Cole’s most recent volume of poems is Things on Which I’ve Stumbled; a new collection, The Invention of Influence, is forthcoming (both from New Directions). His translations include The Poetry of Kabbalah: Mystical Verse from the Jewish Tradition (Yale). Cole, who divides his time between Jerusalem and New Haven, was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2007.