Dan Bellm

Esau

I should go home and make peace with my brother.
Trouble is, we’re not fighting. Where I come from,
We have such good manners we don’t talk to each other.

I should start a good fight. Trouble is, we don’t bother.
So I was there when Dad died, and not him;
So I should go and make peace with my brother?

What, did I steal something? I’ve known forever
Which one Dad loved; all right. So who’s to blame?
We have such good manners, we’re each other’s

Worst joke of a missing half; stand us together,
The macho man, the dreamer, we look the same.
I should go make peace with my hairy brother,

But I’d rather go on resenting him; he’d rather
Go on paternally dispensing shame.
I have such good manners; I don’t say, It’s over

Now: neither one of us gets to be our father
And play the God Almighty. I should go home
And disturb the peace, to make peace with my brother.
We have such good manners, we don’t talk to each other.

Vayishlach, Gen. 32:4 – 36:43

Milk and honey
(from Book of numbers: A war diary, 2003)

O dear God: the land You have promised us
Already has people living in it, and why
Didn’t we hear that part before the exodus?
So this is the choice, to live as slaves or die
As slaves to war. Now think: some other place
You haven’t got? We sent out men to spy
For us, a sorry lot who claim a race
Of giants lives up there, but what a lie.
Most likely long-lost relatives. Hebron’s
A town as old as Esau, walled with stones
They’ll gladly throw at us, blood brothers or not.
Couldn’t we come in peace, share what we’ve got
Including You, settle down and call
It off? But No, You answer. You must dispossess them all.

Shelach-lecha, Num. 13:1 – 15:41

Before Words

A baby is singing in the morning
before anyone is up in the house

Before he has decided
which of all the languages he will speak
he is trying the sounds of his voice
in the first light

He hears a man
come up the street collecting bottles
just ahead of the garbage truck
straining uphill
to come throw them away

He hears the shriek of glass
It is like the vessels of Creation
breaking in God’s hands

He hears the wind around the house
and in the wind
every word he will ever say
and what will stay unsaid

and stops to listen to silence
and sings to it
the way the body addresses the soul lending it shape
lending it comfort and sorrow

The body wants to be useful
and the soul is open so wide

This is the way we awaken
He remembers he is alone
and cries for us.