will kiss you until your senses sizzle
like sweet butter
on a hot stone.
You will see that it is good.
8You are hashmal, gleaming amber,
when streaking God-bolts
thrust jagged daggers across the sky,
slashing it into the slow-bleeding sunsets
that embrace your silhouette.
9You run but the storm never leaves you;
it clings like fog to a mountain.
10The lightning races fast as thought,
frantic for a place to land,
for a place to bridge sky and land
in a momentary star-way-stairway of light.
11It leaves cedar and steppe unscathed,
preferring to pound its light into you,
my weary prophet,
striking with deafening light and blinding thunder.
12You are ignited and bright as hashmal;
you cage a tiny sun in your breast
and it streams through your eyes
and sears over your lips.
13I could be your blanket of snow;
I am as muted and blank.
I could quiet you and cool you.
14Your fever would melt me away
before my presence was felt.
A slight shiver is all I am.
15The world was created through a series of separations. Light from darkness. Day from night. Earth from sea from sky. Second from first.
16O, let my darkness reunite with his light!
Though the world be unborn,
though we return to the void,
17though we become unformed!
At least unformed we cannot bear Your yoke.
18Forgive me my mockery, dear God!
With what frivolity I speak,
with no discipline in my thoughts,
obscuring counsel without knowledge,
speaking without understanding
of things beyond me, which I do not know.
19I recant. I relent.
I am but dust and ashes!
20You established the world in Your wisdom.
21You bring forth the wind from Your treasuries.
22You form all things perfectly
and with purpose.
Mortal eyes cannot see this.
23Dear God, how I love You!
How I love Your good Name!
24You are my God and there is none else,
in the Heavens above and on the earth below,
all else is delusion.
25I gather up my bundle from the ground
and march after my love like an ant.
26For once, I am grateful for my muteness. When Jeremiah speaks, he is a masterful orator, expertly spinning lyrics and parables. 27He harnesses his voice into speeches that dance before chariots of kings.
28If I were to speak,
what folly would pour from my mouth!
29I can blot out the words that I write
and pen them, inspired, anew.
30But a spoken word cannot be retracted.
I may have broken cords, or
caused great commotion
if I spoke out of fever,
or out of distress.
31The passion in my soul
may have been dull when encased
in the limits of spoken language.
32It is the spontaneity of speech
that frightens me the most!
Writing needs no such spontaneity.
33How many times would I have opened my mouth
in a rush to call out, “How I need you! How it hurts!”
34The shame! I can only imagine him
turning around,
shoulders dropping,
head shaking,
and then he would flee from my need,
from my intrusiveness,
from my noise.
35Or perhaps
he would fall to his knees,
perhaps my voice would shatter the spell
and free him, and he would weep into my neck,
my hands in his hair . . .
36I know, O Lord, that You have chosen this path for me,
and that it has meaning even without the spoken word.
37I know, also, that because my mouth is silent
my thoughts are all the louder.
You surely hear them. 38You surely disapprove,
at times. But let me keep them.
Though they nag and disturb,
and become lusty and base.
