Hebrew Verse – My POETRY BOOKSHELF

Art and the spiritual overlap, at least for me, at least sometimes. Catholic upbringing was such that I went to church every school day for 8 years, and I wont try to estimate how many Sundays over many more. At every mass, there is reading of Psalms. These come from the Hebrew.  In my youth, these were read in Latin, which created a type of drone-like song that mapped easily forward even as they were done in English. The song of the psalm sets a constant poem churning in your head. So, no Psalms follow, but bit from my book of Hebrew Verse, a book with poems in fragment form. As always, the blues is knockin. Like many of these, it's bleak, with some leaven. 

Bring me a scroll, get me ink and a
quill and I shall blacken it today with
my tale of woe. When I read it, my
eyes will flow like fountains, for in the
grave I shall not shed any tears. I shall
bewail this lovely form, which my
friends, both men and women, will
rush to the charnel house and shall
bewail this glorious beauty, which can
expect no glory but to be covered with
dust, mouth stopped and eye-lids shut …

But perhaps an angel will speak up in
my favour to lighten my sins and add
weight to my virtues. He will remind
my Rock, as I am being judged, that I
pored over the scriptures and ex-
pounded the Law. - Samuel Hanagid,

Excerpt, p. 301, The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, Penguin Press, 1981
The Penguin books of verse, all, ever friends. Oh, opening up all time and all humanity as poetry.

For related: Habbuk.