Nunc dimittis

“Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.” — Proverbs 13:12

1

The man sleeping is an old world.
He’s seen too much,
looked too much at this wan picture
until grimaces and smiles
were one.

He’s an old book,
telling itself a bedtime story
where the sand and white linen
drinking young blood
are one.

An old wound,
a hard, unfeeling scar
to which blow and caress
are one.

Now he frets and tosses
in the pincers of a dream:
A tree that cries
behind the temple veil,
an infant’s voice
that coos and calls for him.

He sees the ancient drape,
tall as the mystery
behind the embroidered cloth.
Imposing, large, five fingers thick.
There are four sorts to every thread:
three made of wool, of linen one,
and every thread is six times doubled,
twenty four doubles to a thread.

By virgin women woven,
blue, purple, scarlet,
and knit together with such art
as the eye loves to rest upon.

He lifts his hands
to push the heavy curtain
and to the touch he finds astonished
that it feels like human skin.

Suddenly the infant’s voice
goes silent, wings flutter
and convulsion shakes the veil.
A tear appears atop the curtain,
but there’s no ripping sound.
Instead,
the horrid scream of a grown man
sends the scenery askew.

He tries but cannot look away
as gouts of blood drop from the tear
and drench his face and

2

eyes
now prickle
with dull light.

Bones jostle for space
(they always wake up first
and bring the day).

He lays and feels his heart
for the first time in years fight in its cage.
It’s been so long now since
the promise was made,
but had it been too long?

He knew better than to doubt,
and yet day followed day,
each longer than the last until
the sweetness of the promise
and the bitterness of waiting,
and the bleating and the praying
during shechita and tefillah,
all the little scattered victories
and the long defeat that bound them
were one.

But now his heart waits just ahead,
like an Egyptian hound
proud of its quarry.

In the air there’s something
new and unaccounted:
a gentle blowing, a still small voice
just like the one Elijah heard.

And Simeon knows for certain
his appointment has arrived.
His heart leaps
in happy terror.
And a smile cuts his face
when with clarity he sees
that his death
and the new short lease on life
it brought along
are one.

3

Some years before
his eyes had dimmed,
and less and less of him
the Sun had seen.

But out he goes now,
after his heart,
which seems to know the way
and tugs his leash,
to purchase ground amidst the fog
and trace a blind parabola on sand
(maybe no more an asymptote
this time around).

He roams the blurry streets
and drifts among indistinct shapes.
A narrow passage, a sharp turn after,
and he’s thrust into a racket.
Loud haggling and the smell of beasts
at first make him ask:
“But why the market?”
Then the incense and the chanting
from behind the nearby wall
greet him like an old acquaintance
and he mutters to himself:
“Of course,
it had to be the temple,
I am not myself today.”

Simeon finds the Eastern Gate
and crosses to the Court of Women.
He takes in the surroundings
but already something’s wrong:
There are no shouts of joy, no music.
No grandeur that compels the knee.
The day is muted, uninvolved,
and plods along in worn out ruts.

So is he late, is he too early?

Dismay pours in through the fissures:
How much can he trust
the remembrance of a memory
that grew old in faded colors
in the attic of his mind?
And he despairs
of recovering his heart,
lost to the chase
God only knows where.

Peddlers shout
on both sides of the Court,
priests ring their chants,
the learned drone on and on,
trying to pin down wriggling words,
supplicants bring in their sins and bail
and Simeon’s anger radiates
inwards and outwards,
scorching doubters and believers,
most of all himself for falling
for the whims of a dull mind
in the outskirts of which a baby cries,
a dove coos and flaps its wings.

Simeon tries to think
but the crying is a bradawl
boring through his mind.

Before the memory can find him
he turns and dashes towards the gate.
But his retreat is interrupted
when he bumps into a woman,
knocking something off her arms.
His body jolts with swift precision,
unknown to his final years, and
he catches

4

the baby is clear as day
used to be.

The world around Him is a smudge;
the child is sharp, though,
high-definition,
no longer crying but observing
Simeon’s face with tranquil eyes.

This…
this is not what he had thought.

This child is poor –
from the parents wafts
a whiff of beasts and sweat,
of gruel, sleeplessness and lumber,
rust and iron, mother’s milk…

Simeon steals a glance
and sees the one
from whom God took
that perfectly round head,
that fearless mouth.

To no surprise she’s also clear,
a spot of unblemished world,
a gardener’s pride,
knit together with such art
as the eye loves to rest upon.

He looks back at the child
and considers.

That tiny thing, that fragile package…
Can he make himself believe
that those chubby little fingers
that the child sucks and drools on –
that they have cradled suns
and his own soul before time was?

That mewling thing is to be
the final teacher of economy,
to settle once for all the old account…?

He brings the child closer to his face
and little hands all wet with spit
then touch his eyes,
from which immediately there fall
as if were scales.

His eyes, fresh wounds again,
for the first time in years the Temple see,
all the details of what’s around him,
and even more, of what’s to come:

That tender flesh, excoriated.
That little mouth,
spat on and then struck…

And he lets out a wounded cry
at the cruciform shadow
creeping over dust and rock,
branding the Earth, indelibly.

He sees Death trembling
on a Sunday morning
and understands how much
things just have changed.

The world he soon will leave
is now fully mapped to reality.
There’s a word for everything.
The mind accepts the thorns
as safety measure.
Truth has arrived and will speak.

He sees the cross of space and time,
too heavy to bear
but for the carpenter that made it,
the One for whom
final victory and death,
and all the misery and ecstasy
all the boredom and carnage,
companionship and loneliness,
the pageantry and pantomime
of what amounts to humans waiting
are one.

He sees a stoning, persecutions,
the blaring eye of conscience
hounding the persecutor at last.
The city’s curtain walls all rent asunder…
Life flourishing in catacombs,
souls comforted
on the wine of ripened hearts,
crushed in the presses of hard kings…

The oppressor’s fall,
the change, miraculous,
of beasts to men and angels after…
A frail mendicant prince
sustaining the whole building…

The old crescent reappears,
that mocking mouth,
first as a moon, then as a sickle,
demanding its old tribute,
pretending nothing happened,
and drinks and drinks and drinks…

He sees the rock standing
in the ravage of existing,
the dross of time encroaching
in the cracks, and noise
festering, mellifluous,
in a boil of cacophony,
waiting to burst in years to come…

He sees stormings of the Heavens
on an embarrassment of corpses
and the accelerating journey
becoming a drunk tumble
and collapsing, careening
through the desert
of quote unquote reason
stretching us to breaking point
until the old serpent and the woman
play their parts…

And all the secret things
that will be shouted from the rooftops
on that day that finally came
and you were too late to notice -
down to this unknown hand, that
like one who speaks
in the ear in closets,
is writing down this very scene…

5

The baby sleeps. His time is up.

He says a few words
to the mother and to God
(which are not his alone,
he’s well aware).

With firmer steps
than when he came he walks away,
and the world, made sharp again
pierces his heart, made flesh again.
He could not die, for he was dead.
Now that he’s here he can depart.

As he goes home
his head goes light.

Words from the wisest king
alight on him:

On hope deferred,
desire fulfilled,
life-giving trees.

He thinks his part the best
over the king’s:
“For he received Wisdom in a dream,
which in my arms I held
and lulled to sleep”.