To Believe
Fred Houpt
[boyboy_8@yahoo.com]
I have been thumped, beaten into submission
By Talmudic logic
So unforgiving in its scope, no missile is as precise
In its perception of a target as these saintly Rabbis.
"Believe? It's not even a question! How can I ask it?
What is not to believe and as the good book says "
With the skill of a mason, whose hands shaped the sphinx
The answers are dropped onto my head without cement
The prophets grip my flailing feet as I squirrel myself
Under the academy table.
Looking to extract my doubts with the glee of an exorcism
I am read chapter and verse and they show no mercy
I leap to my feet and start my rebuttal; catching them off guard
I quote an obscure passage from the Yoga Sutras; they are silenced.
Offering the sacred words of "blessed are the meek"
Their thoughts are shamed into reflections on the Baal Shem Tov.
A firebrand from their midst accuses me of doubting the Fathers.
With a magic wand I remind them of Ishmael, Esau and Bilam
And worry has furrowed the brows of the crowd.
The dark side has a ten lane freeway linking itself to the Saints.
Pounding the table I clarify that I don't know what to believe anymore.
Who will cast a stone at Arjuna for defending his Lord?
Who has hate in his heart of hearts for the mother of Yeshua, please rise now.
Even more so, I shout, who will commend the acts of our people
That destroyed two temples and dispersed a nation twice.
I release my harness from the millstone of belief
Boring a hole through my own being, I singe myself
In my endless search for what is true.
I am a heretic, I dance. I am calling God to be accountable
For giving us a diamond so perfect that no one understands it at all.
And as the compass of time has swung its tattered sails over the body
We drift further from the destination
You who are so holy, do not judge me for leaping off the edge.
I appear to abandon you only to resurface in a place I can not yet describe.
I can no more tow the party line than I can accept
The currents direction as we head for the waterfalls.
If I am to believe, I shall choose what it will be.
I have turned myself into a pearl fisher.
Let me dive deeply for the lost treasures of Sinai
That were misplaced after so many years of careful contemplation.
Poem © 2000 Fred Houpt, all rights reserved
appears here by permission
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Out of the crucible of sturm and drang (I think that's how Goethe put
it) came this evocative description of a conflict that I was and am still
having along the craggy fault lines of "belief". Along these
fault lines many quakes have shaken me and I feel more coming and
perhaps more poetic surrender as well.
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