Wednesday, October 23, 2019

B'reishit: a poem for Creation and Tzimtzum

The Beginning didn't just break;
it shattered,
splintered and spilled
in a hundred -
a thousand
an infinity of directions.

God was not content,
apparently,
with the tzimtzum of Her creation,
the inhaled withdrawal,
an absence of essence.
Into that empty space
that once was filled
with the endlessness
of God, was filled now
with the chaos of dark
and light.
A single day,
and then six more,
and it was,
they were, mostly,
good.

And in that exact same instant,
in the inhaled breath
of the endless god,
light!

There was evening,
there was morning,
again and again and
again and again
millennia of agains,
and then a few more.
Tzimtzum

Year upon year,
age upon age,
mountains rose and
empires fell.
One day followed by another
and another
and another,
so often that sometimes
they ceased to have
meaning
or weight.
They were merely
time and again,
day upon day,
life after life,
mostly good.

A pretty good trick
to play, a sleight of hand
with space and light -
a divine game of cups.
Pick a hand held behind God's back.
He seems to favor that position.

What would it be like
I wonder, to be endless -
without end and infinite,
the superlative of all
superlatives?
would it be lonely
do you think
to be that
indivisibly singular?
To be filled to empty to full
in the blink of an eye
all at the same time?

I think if that were me,
I would want to scream.
I would want to gather in all my
everythingness, only to realize
there was nowhere to gather,
no thing to hold,
because I was everything
in every direction.
Only me,
with no spaces
or cracks
to let the light in.
Would I even know
what light is
or space?

Would I know sun
and sky and water and rain?
Would I see the Glory
and know that it was all
incompletely good?
Would I know God
and would I sing
praises to Her name?

1 comment:

Betsy Fuchs said...

Incompletely good. I will remember that as we start the cycle of Torah again, the creation, b'reishit. Such an amazing world we live in as you remind us, and whomever/whatever made it... I am grateful, awed at it awesomeness and awfulness. Thank you Stacey.