USA

grgreenw@artsci.wustl.edu

VIA POSITIVA:
MARTIN BUBER

In the eighteenth chapter of the first book
of the book, Abraham, rising

to greet the visitors in whose aspects
he recognizes both his lord and the messengers

of his lord, performs those sacraments
by which one welcomes strangers

and gods: the bathing of feet, the slaughter
and preparation of a calf

fed only as yet on milk. Thus, by purity and force
of intention, by the observance

of ritual and law, even the grossest
processes of the flesh may be made

hallowed, that beings entirely
bodiless may partake

in the ceremonies
of the body. It is for this reason

that Abraham stands above
his visitors as they eat, that he,

being of both nature and God, may stage,
as they may not, the reconciliation

through which Creation becomes
a proper dwelling place

for Kingdom. It is the work of man
to invite into his Paradise

the presence of his God. And the angels
take up again their journey toward Sodom.

(Originally appeared in MARGIE)

STUDIES OF THE BODY IN EXTREMITY
Dance

As though music were the brand the body bears
and bears against, or he
the dog its stake is bound to, the man

moves in denial of those limits
by which the body is not only felt,
but made—weakness, fatigue, the weight

whose longing is always to be
left still; —moves
as though he would reveal

in the pained, exalted tremblings of the flesh
something like
the inscrutable processes of weather

or of flame, the rough
and rattling clockwork of
devotion. It is what I’ve yearned

to, this clear and ceaseless discipline
of the body, what I have always
failed, grown large

with what I can’t, although I loathe it, leave
untaken. What is the flesh
if not the proving-ground for will, if not

the line at which we sign our lives
and claim abidance
of the law? It is for this

I want him: not
that he is beautiful, but that
of the earth we’re made of he has made

both argument and proof: a dwelling
with the compass of
a kingdom.

(Originally appeared in Canary River Review)

VIA NEGATIVA:
MEISTER ECKHART

As what gleams in a bowl half filled with water
in the center of which floats

a mirror the size of a coin, placed
to catch the strongest cast of the sun

is not the sun, however certainly it seems it, so
what rises in you—as though

toward what has crafted it, what, having crafted, has
called—toward what you persist

in thinking of as God is not
God, is, rather, pride, and, as pride,

as distant from what has longed you
as is this light that warms us

only so much as we can stand
from what first birthed it, what, striking, would—

as practiced hands de-vein the prone, split
bodies of shrimp—unshadow us, un-

psalm.

© All Copyright, Garth Greenwell.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.