La Création
—Chagall Museum, Nice
Naked, from out the blue vortex,
a grown man lightly borne
in a blue-winged angel's arms
bends his head to the staggering light,
a man newly born, looking
to the world above, the world
of fish and the yellow moon
and the woman curved like a giant red ear,
the red sun, swirling, blown
out of an angel's horn,
the ram-headed man with the red Torah,
the shtetl, the rabbi, the ladder,
the menorah's nine lemony flames,
the purple-breasted women,
the blue lyre held by the blue king,
the donkey, lion, goat,
the golden fish with hands for fins,
the bearded butterfly. Above,
above His Son swaying on the white Cross,
flaccid abdomen covered at the groin
by a gray-fringed prayer shawl,
above it all, disembodied, two hands,
the visible hands of hiding
God, proffer twin tablets shaped
like pale loaves, or gravestones,
and I put my arm around my new wife’s waist,
and she puts her arm around mine,
and we hold like that a minute
in that white room, in that white light,
infinite wavelets of white light.
— roy jacobstein
This poem first appeared in Luna, and in Roy Jacobstein's first book Ripe, winner of the Felix Pollack prize.