Beyond Commandment

"It is not the sound of victory,
It is not the sound of defeat;
It is the sound of music that I hear."
EXODUS 32:18-19

Beyond commandment there is a word.

Dear lord help us speak,

Let us speak of concrete and of empty bottles.

Let us reason,

Let us rhapsodize

On exhaust and day-old papers --

Our news, dear god, we must believe.

 

Beyond the junk is gold,

Guiltily wrought of what we love,

Thinking always of the purple mountains

And worshipping majesty.

Sinai looms and we smelt baubles,

Desperate in the face of monolith,

Casting something vain from knick-knacks.

 

Beyond God there is a name,

The name of a charm not offered,

Not melted, too precious, the real

Blare of a radio dragged onto the streets.

Desperate in the face of holocaust

We wait somehow we pray to the traffic:

 

Not for stone, nor image,

But the message in the fire.

- Sally Clay
April 6, 1982

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