Sean Elliot
The Golem
Dark streets, sleepwalker step, the doughy face,
the Rabbi’s clay man with the single word
Emeth for truth scratched on his brow, absurd
and mute with little memory; erase
one letter and he halts, becoming death:
a motionless grotesque, each block-like hand
clenched as with grief. He will not understand
complex commands, they are a waste of breath,
but ambles on indifferent to the order:
bring gold, save us from soldiers, burn and ravage
this evil land. All’s one to him. Let mad
men rage or sane men cry, he will not falter
while we, alas, like a magpie’s plumage,
neither entirely good or wholly bad.
the Rabbi’s clay man with the single word
Emeth for truth scratched on his brow, absurd
and mute with little memory; erase
one letter and he halts, becoming death:
a motionless grotesque, each block-like hand
clenched as with grief. He will not understand
complex commands, they are a waste of breath,
but ambles on indifferent to the order:
bring gold, save us from soldiers, burn and ravage
this evil land. All’s one to him. Let mad
men rage or sane men cry, he will not falter
while we, alas, like a magpie’s plumage,
neither entirely good or wholly bad.
Page(s) 22
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