by lobomao
loved "I am the I I am" I think this one slipped a bit deeper than your previous poem...
jim : )
Fine wordplay throughout.
I was hoping you'd play harder and more consistently on the Moses angle when I started it, but it held my interest througout.
Nice work.
I found this the more satisfying of your two poems today.
When you create, you in fact become a bit like god, or as the bible says: (I quote in the Hebrew first): “Betselem Elohim”, “in the image of god” we were created. To think that God reffered to us all – quite a credit indeed. My sympathy to the sentiment you conveyed at the end of your poem, in which you created a parallel between the inherent opaqueness of god’s words and that of the poet. The most fascinating part - here it comes, in the midst of the darkest most hopeless days of the Jews in Europe, way away from any physical haven, the search for meaning - the exact parallel to your: “SO you and you and you / Take from it what you will” etc.., any group of desperate Jews did not have to wait till arriving at distant shores to hear the divine voice, nor to the end of days. The religion evolved, as if by a survival instinct, and you just had to gather in a group, put your mind together with fellow Jews and study, make your best of what a holy text means. Figure out the way it made sense to them at the moment. And at the moment, the sages say, godliness is within them. It was said: “KI LO BASHMAIM HI”, Which means it is not in the sky! But in the minds of every group of people which engages in a dialogue about the holy texts. Quite a shift from a temple –centered or even priests centered religion.
This poem was mentioned in the Archival Review thread, in a picking through Lit's archive of over 38,000 poems.
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