Poem of the Week: Autumn Psalm

This one is a bit longer than I usually do, but I think it's just delightful!

Autumn Psalm

By Jacqueline Osherow

 

A full year passed (the seasons keep me honest)

since I last noticed this same commotion.

Who knew God was an abstract expressionist?

I’m asking myself—the very question

I asked last year, staring out at this array

of racing colors, then set in motion

by the chance invasion of a Steller’s jay.

Is this what people mean by speed of light?

My usually levelheaded mulberry tree

hurling arrows everywhere in sight—

its bow: the out-of-control Virginia creeper

my friends say I should do something about,

whose vermilion went at least a full shade deeper

at the provocation of the upstart blue,

the leaves (half green, half gold) suddenly hyper

in savage competition with that red and blue—

tohubohu returned, in living color.

Kandinsky: where were you when I needed you?

My attempted poem would lie fallow a year;

I was so busy focusing on the desert’s

stinginess with everything but rumor.

No place even for the spectrum’s introverts—

rose, olive, gray—no pigment at all—

and certainly no room for shameless braggarts

like the ones that barge in here every fall

and make me feel like an unredeemed failure

even more emphatically than usual.

And here they are again, their fleet allure

still more urgent this time—the desert’s gone;

I’m through with it, want something fuller—

why shouldn’t a person have a little fun,

some utterly unnecessary extravagance?

Which was—at least I think it was—God’s plan

when He set up (such things are never left to chance)

that one split-second assignation

with genuine, no-kidding-around omnipotence

what, for lack of better words, I’m calling vision.

You breathe in, and, for once, there’s something there.

Just when you thought you’d learned some resignation,

there’s real resistance in the nearby air

until the entire universe is swayed.

Even that desert of yours isn’t quite so bare

and God’s not nonexistent; He’s just been waylaid

by a host of what no one could’ve foreseen.

He’s got plans for you: this red-gold-green parade

is actually a fairly detailed outline.

David never needed one, but he’s long dead

and God could use a little recognition.

He promises. It won’t go to His head

and if you praise Him properly (an autumn psalm!

Why didn’t I think of that?) you’ll have it made.

But while it’s true that my Virginia creeper praises Him,

its palms and fingers crimson with applause,

that the local breeze is weaving Him a diadem,

inspecting my tree’s uncut gold for flaws,

I came to talk about the way that violet-blue

sprang the greens and reds and yellows

into action: actual motion. I swear it’s true

though I’m not sure I ever took it in.

Now I’d be prepared, if some magician flew

into my field of vision, to realign

that dazzle out my window yet again.

It’s not likely, but I’m keeping my eyes open

though I still wouldn’t be able to explain

precisely what happened to these vines, these trees.

It isn’t available in my tradition.

For this, I would have to be Chinese,

Wang Wei, to be precise, on a mountain,

autumn rain converging on the trees,

a cassia flower nearby, a cloud, a pine,

washerwomen heading home for the day,

my senses and the mountain so entirely in tune

that when my stroke of blue arrives, I’m ready.

Though there is no rain here: the air’s shot through

with gold on golden leaves. Wang Wei’s so giddy

he’s calling back the dead: Li Bai! Du Fu!

Guys! You’ve got to see this—autumn sun!

They’re suddenly hell-bent on learning Hebrew

in order to get inside the celebration,

which explains how they wound up where they are

in my university library’s squashed domain.

Poor guys, it was Hebrew they were looking for,

but they ended up across the aisle from Yiddish—

some Library of Congress cataloger’s sense of humor:

the world’s calmest characters and its most skittish

squinting at each other, head to head,

all silently intoning some version of kaddish

for their nonexistent readers, one side’s dead

(the twentieth century’s lasting contribution)

and the other’s insufficiently learned

to understand a fraction of what they mean.

The writings in the world’s most spoken language

across from one that can barely get a minyan.

Sick of lanzmen, the yidden are trying to engage

the guys across the aisle in some conversation:

How, for example, do you squeeze an image

into so few words, respectfully asks Glatstein.

Wang Wei, at first, doesn’t understand the problem

but then he shrugs his shoulders, mumbles Zen

... but, please, I, myself, overheard a poem,

in the autumn rain, once, on a mountain.

How do you do it? I believe it’s called a psalm?

Glatstein’s cronies all crack up in unison.

Okay, groise macher, give him an answer.

But Glatstein dons his yarmulke (who knew he had one?)

and starts the introduction to the morning prayer,

Pisukei di zimrah, psalm by psalm.

Wang Wei is spellbound, the stacks’ stale air

suddenly a veritable balm

and I’m so touched by these amazing goings-on

that I’ve forgotten all about the autumn

staring straight at me: still alive, still golden.

What’s gold, anyway, compared to poetry?

a trick of chlorophyll, a trick of sun.

True. It was something, my changing tree

with its perfect complement: a crimson vine,

both thrown into panic by a Steller’s jay,

but it’s hard to shake the habit of digression.

Wandering has always been my people’s way

whether we’re in a desert or narration.

It’s too late to emulate Wang Wei

and his solitary years on that one mountain

though I’d love to say what I set out to say

just once. Next autumn, maybe. What’s the occasion?

Glatstein will shout over to me from the bookcase

(that is, if he’s paying any attention)

and, finally, I’ll look him in the face.

Quick. Out the window, Yankev. It’s here again.

HT: Poetry Foundation