Book of Mercy (3 page)

Y
OU WHO POUR MERCY INTO
hell, sole authority in the highest and the lowest worlds, let your anger disperse the mist in this aimless place, where even my sins fall short of the mark. Let me be with you again, absolute companion, let me study your ways which are just beyond the hope of evil. Seize my heart out of its fantasy, direct my heart from the fiction of secrecy, you who know the secrets of every
heart, whose mercy is to be the secret of longing. Let every heart declare its secret, let every song disclose your love, let us bring to you the sorrows of our freedom. Blessed are you, who opens a gate in every moment, to enter in truth or tarry in hell. Let me be with you again, let me put this away, you who wait beside me, who have broken down your world to gather hearts. Blessed is your name, blessed is the confession of your name. Kindle the darkness of my calling, let me cry to the one who judges the heart in justice and mercy. Arouse my heart again with the limitless breath you breathe into me, arouse the secret from obscurity.

B
LESS THE LORD, O MY
soul, who made you a singer in his holy house forever, who has given you a tongue like the wind, and a heart like the sea, who has journeyed you from generation to generation to this impeccable moment of sweet bewilderment. Bless the Lord who has surrounded the traffic of human interest with the majesty of his law, who has given a direction to the falling leaf, and a goal to the green shoot. Tremble, my soul, before the one who creates good and evil, that a man may choose among worlds; and tremble before the furnace of light in which you are formed and to which you return, until the time when he suspends his light and withdraws into
himself, and there is no world, and there is no soul anywhere. Bless the one who judges you with his strap and his mercy, who covers with a million years of dust those who say, I have not sinned. Gather me, O my soul, around your longing, and from your eternal place inform my homelessness, that I may bring you forth and husband you, and make the day a throne for your activity, and the night a tower for your watchfulness, and all my time your just dominion. Sing, my soul, to the one who moves like music, who comes down like steps of lightning, who widens space with the thought of his name, who returns like death, deep and intangible, to his own absence and his own glory. Bless the Lord, O my soul, draw down the blessing of authority, that you may invite me to uncover you, and hold you precious till I’m worn away, and we are refreshed, soul and shadow, refreshed and rested like a sundial standing in the night. Bless the Lord, O my soul, cry out toward his mercy, cry out with tears and song and every instrument, stretch yourself toward the undivided glory which he established merely as his footstool, when he created forever, and he made it-is-finished, and he signed the foundations of unity, and polished the atoms of love to shine back beams and paths and gates of return. Bless the Lord, O my soul. Bless his name forever.

H
ERE THE DESTRUCTION
is subtle, and there the body is torn. Here the breaking is perceived, and there the dead unaware carry their putrid remains. All trade in filth, carry their filth one to another, all walk the streets as though the ground did not recoil, all stretch their necks to bite the air, as though the breath had not withdrawn. The seed bursts without a blessing, and the harvest is gathered as if it were food. The bride and the bridegroom sink down to combine, and flesh is brought forth as if it were child. They bring their unclean hands to secret doctors, amazed at their pain, as if they had washed their hands, as if they had lifted up their hands. They write and they weep, as though evil were the miracle. They hear bad
tidings, as though they were the judge. They run to what they have not soiled, but the trees and waters hide themselves behind a blessing which they are too proud to know. What they kill is already dead, and what they eat, though it be the wildest berry and they suck it from the stem, has withered long before. Let them lie on the grass, they lie on a machine. There is no world without the blessing, and every plate to which they drop their face is an abomination of blood and suffering and maggots. They leap on the hunchback with a knife, they tear at the young girl’s halter, because there is no fence in their heart, nor knowledge of the one who varies the appearance of his creatures. The dew is not dew that has not been petitioned. Raise a million filters and the rain will not be clean, until the longing for it be refined in deep confession. And still we hear, If only this nation had a soul, or, Let us change the way we trade, or, Let us be proud of our region.

W
HEN I HAVE NOT RAGE
or sorrow, and you depart from me, then I am most afraid. When the belly is full, and the mind has its sayings, then I fear for my soul; I rush to you as a child at night breaks into its parents’ room. Do not forget me in my satisfaction. When the heart grins at itself, the world is destroyed. And I am found alone with the husks and the shells. Then the dangerous moment
comes: I am too great to ask for help. I have other hopes. I legislate from the fortress of my disappointments, with a set jaw. Overthrow this even terror with a sweet remembrance: when I was with you, when my soul delighted you, when I was what you wanted. My heart sings of your longing for me, and my thoughts climb down to marvel at your mercy. I do not fear as you gather up my days. Your name is the sweetness of time, and you carry me close into the night, speaking consolations, drawing down lights from the sky, saying, See how the night has no terror for one who remembers the Name.

W
E CRY OUT FOR WHAT WE
have lost, and we remember you again. We look for each other, we cannot find us, and we remember you. From the ground of no purpose our children accuse us, and we remember, we recall a purpose. Could it be? we wonder. And here is death. Could it possibly be? And here is old age. And we never knew; we never stood up, and the good land was taken from us, and the sweet family was crushed. Maybe, we said, it could be, and we gave it a place among the possibilities. I’ll do it myself, we said, as shame thickened the faculties of the
heart. And the first reports were of failure, and the second of mutilations, and the third of every abomination. We remember, we cry out to you to return our soul. Is it really upon us? Yes, it is upon us. Do we merit this? Yes, we merit this. We cry out for what we have lost, and we remember you. We remember the containing word, the holy channels of commandment, and goodness waiting forever on the Path. And here and there, among the seventy tongues and the hundred darknesses – something, something shining, men of courage strengthening themselves to kindle the lights of repentance.

Y
OU WHO QUESTION SOULS
, and you to whom souls must answer, do not cut off the soul of my son on my account. Let the strength of his childhood lead him to you, and the joy of his body stand him upright in your eyes. May he discern my prayer for him, and to whom it is uttered, and in what shame. I received the living waters and I held them in a stagnant pool. I was taught but I did not teach. I was loved but I did not love. I weakened the name that spoke me, and I chased the light with my own understanding. Whisper in his ear. Direct him to a place of learning. Illuminate his child’s belief in mightiness. Rescue him from those who want him with no soul, who
have their channels in the bedrooms of the rich and poor, to draw the children into death. Let him see me coming back. Allow us to bring forth our souls together to make a place for your name. If I am too late, redeem my yearning in his heart, bless him with a soul that remembers you, that he may uncover it with careful husbandry. They who wish to devour him have grown powerful on my idleness. They have a number for him, and a chain. Let him see them withered in the light of your name. Let him see their dead kingdom from the mountain of your word. Stand him up upon his soul, bless him with the truth of manhood.

Y
OU ARE WITH ME STILL.
Even though I have been removed, and my place does not recognize me. Even though I have filled my heart with stones. And my beloved says,
I will wait a little while behind this curtain – no, I have waited too long.
You are with me still. Though I scorched away the tears of return in the forced light of victory, your rebuke still
comforts me, you signify yourself among the dangers. Saying,
Use this fear to know me, fix this exile toward my return.
Though I am unwept, it is your judgement parches me. Though my praises for you are under ban, it is the balance of your mercy. And you are with me still. Saying,
Search this out, it is you who have hidden yourself.
Saying,
Clear me in your troubled heart.
Saying,
I will come to you.
Saying,
I am here.
Though I add membrane to membrane against your light, and heap up cities on the husk of your rebuke, when the sun and the moon are shining in the other pan, and you advance me through the solitude by such a kind degree, and you create the world before my eyes, and the one who hides in self-disgrace cannot say Amen, O slow to anger, you are with me, you are with me still.

I
TURNED YOU TO STONE.
You stepped outside the stone. I turned you to desire. You saw me touch myself. I turned you into a tradition. The tradition devoured its children. I turned you to loneliness, and it corrupted into a vehicle of power. I turned you into a silence which became a roar of accusation. If it be your will, accept the longing truth beneath this wild activity. Open me, O heart of truth, hollow out the stone, let your Bride fulfil this loneliness. I have no other hope, no other moves. This is my offering of incense. This is what I wish to burn, my darkness with no blemish, my ignorance with no flaw. Bind me to your will, bind me with these threads of sorrow, and gather me out of the afternoon where I have torn my soul on twenty monstrous altars, offering all things but myself.

T
HOUGH I DON’T BELIEVE
, I come to you now, and I lift my doubt to your mercy. Under the scorn of my own pride I open my mouth to ask you again: Make an end to these harsh preparations. I made a crown for myself with your blessings, and you locked me down to self-mockery. You said, ‘Study the world that is without me, this wild degree of solitude.’ I covered up the path of desire and I overthrew the bridge of tears, and I prepared the wilderness
on which the Accuser walks. The Accuser has no song, and he has no tears. Speak to me again. Speak to my words. Give this ghost the form of tears, that he move from nothing to sorrow, into Creation, even winter, even loss, that he have weight, that he be placed. Discover him in tears and make a place for his longing. Behold him in your court, one who upholds the throne of praises. Where have I been? I gave the world to the Accuser. Where do I go? I go to ask for pardon from the Most High.

I
T IS ALL AROUND ME, THE
darkness. You are my only shield. Your name is my only light. What love I have, your law is the source, this dead love that remembers only its name, yet the name is enough to open itself like a mouth, to call down the dew, and drink. O dead name that through your mercy speaks to the living name, mercy harkening to the will that is bent toward it, the will whose strength is its pledge to you – O name of love, draw down the blessing of completion on the man whom you have cut in half to know you.

A
S MY FATHERS WROTE, AS
my mothers spoke, to be so blessed as to know your name. Not far from here, where Rashi taught, to lift my voice in open thought. Beside the church where we were struck to prove some point on Christmas Eve, to be here still with broken heart and joyous word. To have this work, to fill this line, to be so blessed for my mother’s sake, for my father’s wine

F
ROM YOU ALONE TO YOU
alone, everlasting to everlasting, all that is not you is suffering, all that is not you is solitude rehearsing the arguments of loss. All that is not you is the man collapsing against his own forehead, and the forehead crushes him. All that is not you goes out and out, gathering the voices of revenge, harvesting lost triumphs far from the real and necessary defeat. It is to you I speak, solitude to unity, failure to mercy, and loss to the light. It is you I welcome here, coming through the coarse glory of my imagination, to this very night, to this very couch, to this very darkness. Grant me a forgiving sleep, and rest my enemy.

L
ET ME NOT PRETEND YOU
are with me, when you are not with me. Let me close down, let the puppet fall among the strings, until, by your mercy, he rises as a man. Let him dare to call on you from the dust, when there is nothing but dust, and the coils of his defeat. Enter me again into the judgement, I who refuse to be judged. Enter me into the mercy, I who have forgotten mercy. Let me raise your kingdom to the beauty of your name. Why do you welcome me? asks the bitter heart. Why do you comfort me? asks the heart that is not broken enough. Let him
lie among the strings until there is no hope for his daily strategy, until he cries, I am yours, I am your creature. Then the surface of the world is restored, then he can walk and build a will. Blessed are you whose blessings are discerned by those who know your name. The evil are seen clearly, and the good are beyond safety, and in the panic the whole world prays, Let us not be tested. Blessed are you who creates and destroys, who sits in judgement on numberless worlds, who judges the present with mercy.

I
LOOK FAR, I FORGET YOU
and I’m lost. I lift my hands to you. I kneel toward my heart. I have no other home. My love is here. I end the day in mercy that I wasted in despair. Bind me to you, I fall away. Bind me, ease of my heart, bind me to your love. Gentle things you return to me, and duties that are sweet. And you say, I am in this heart, I and my name are here. Everywhere the blades turn, in every thought the butchery, and it is raw where I wander; but you hide me in the shelter of your name, and you open the hardness to tears. The drifting is to you, and the swell of suffering breaks toward you. You draw me back to close my eyes, to bless your name in speechlessness. Blessed are you in the smallness of your whispering. Blessed are you who speaks to the unworthy.