and you have pierced me, unrolled me, and now you are reading me. 46Your eyes are two disks filled with seeing. Jeremiah! 47The light is vanishing, bleeding away from us. 48My head is water, my eyes a fount of tears. 49You look at me. Your eyes say, “Let there be,” and all at once, I am.
50And then you take a razor in your hand
and sheer your lustrous locks. I lament!
That I ever made such a vow!
51The wind bears them onto the heights
and I gather them, every one, like a bundle of grain. 52I tie them together with my arms. They fall over me in a swath of black silk. 53You lower your eyes and the world reappears. 54You might never look to me again, but it matters not. 55I am cast into the depths, into the heartbeat of the sea. 56Your sweetest floods engulf me and lovely breakers and billows sweep above me. 57Your waters close in over me. I drink them in! I sink to the base of the mountains, rocking gently as a feather from a great height, weeds twine around my head, and I rest on the kelp of the ocean floor, soft and pure. 58As many stars are in the Heavens is as many cubits deep am I, deep in love, drowning in dreaming.
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All at once ~wrote Anatiya ~ my bones are seeped with understanding. 2Were you the child who peeked into the room? 3Suddenly the illusions of this life are torn out of their graves and exposed to the blazing sun. 4All is layers, layers of meanings, existing together in the subtlest of harmony. 5My ears are suddenly tuned in to these intricacies of music and meaning. 6In this stationary rock I see a parade of activity. In the white core of the sun I see all colors. 7I now hear your words, which I have loved from afar, which I have heard addressed always to others and never to me, I now hear them in layers. 8I hear you speaking to me, almost courting, softly and tearfully, explaining to me, gently, the nature of being. 9Do you love me? Have you always loved me? 10On the surface you speak of the wicked folk, but underneath you tickle me with fantasies, with the voice of the bridegroom rejoicing over his bride.
11What you say to them they cannot interpret,
but I now see the myriad meanings
you heap upon the precious crown of the letter yud.
12I am now wise to the betrayal of sight!
13Eve saw that the fruit was a delight to the eyes,
and even so when she ate, her eyes were opened!
14There are so many layers to seeing,
the deepest of which is called insight.
15We are born with only the barest level of sight.
We are basically blind,
and ego is our stumbling block.
16I surrender my ego to loving you,
I surrender my being to love,
and at once my eyes are opened
and I see that we are naked,
and I see that we are alone
under a lush
canopy of trees
on a plush
carpet of dewy grass.
17Your fingers taste
sixty times sweeter than honey.
18Rivers wind through the whole land
and God’s voice is here, strolling.
Fruit hangs with heavy pulp
sticky on our hands
and in our lips.
19Your lips are crimson.
Your body is gold
and seamless.
20A bed of blossoms
and beams of cedar
and cypress.
The flutter of a turtledove.
21My eyes are opened and I see
even deeper than Eve.
I see that I want to stay here,
I am not eager to leave.
22I love this clear-water wellspring.
I love this frankincense forest.
I have no trace of wanderlust.
23I spin the two cherubs
with their fiery swords
around and around
until they are dizzy
and giddy
and drunk on my rapture,
24so they think they are keeping us out,
but in truth they are keeping us in.
25I am wise to the deception of sight.
I see in this desert
there is the ghost of an ocean
26I see in this Temple
there is the Tower of Babel,
scratching at Heaven’s
glassy surface.
27The House that bears His Name
is defiled to make a name for ourselves.
28God is pulling back His bow
like an archer.
His arrow is a foreign nation.
29He will scatter us soon
over the face of the earth.
He will confound our language
and confuse our tongue.
30I hear you weeping,
“All is not well.”
31You know that we are naked and
only you and I are blushing.
32Only you and I are wise
to the flagrant bond between
shame
and joy.
~wrote Anatiya.
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