7 Ramadan

  DRUNKENNESS OF THE WORD

Drunkenness of the Word, you ignite the nations
   as nothing else can, flame of
sculpted stars carried from
         arena to arena, hoarse

whisper made by a solitary singer in a
     vacant lot in the
spotlight of the full moon in his

uprise, rung by rung, from trashy mortality,
head dazed by successive different colors of halo,
to the most celestial dimensions until,

eyes just at the level of cloud-vapor,
he catches sight of his goal and is
transformed into a fixed aerial body

that comes back singing,

and walks through the
marketplace buying
a pound of figs, a dried fish,
a trowelful of almonds, bunches of bananas and
a pot-scraper made of wood-shavings
     somehow held together.

In the most windless place in the
shadow of the dunes of doom.
O Word made alive by our
    pronunciation of you
       unawares, you flower all of a sudden into

forests inhabited by prismatic birds whose
   flight breaks light into the
      primary colors and
  spreads their sheen on the
    broad leaves of our
        private pleas!

Word of Love, cry out of desperation,
word half-spoken, the other half,
     caught in the heart,
word like a groundhog checking the
     length of its shadow before fully
emerging, song,
     solitudes' antique chorus

that, each time the lips get to form it,
is polished anew and
   emerges bronze and perfectly ticking
        with open face and

solid footing.

We are reversed in our lives
until the Word speaks us
and faces us forward
into the spray of the cascade of its
  meaning always coming toward us

from above sea-level where the Source of all
words and The Word itself

high atop a tower of Light
sends it down fully
propelled for the
     journey.