In The Middle
IN THE MIDDLE
In the middle of the unending darkness that stretches on beyond forever
In the middle of the vast nowhere whose name has no shadow and no space
In the middle of all the generations whose anonymous past will be complemented by their overextended futures,
In the middle of the mass of nameless mankind featureless
In the middle of all that is and ever has been
In the middle of what was and will be always forever not
In the middle
In one small moment whose end is unpredictable
While the light still shines on the green green world
And the love and joy in the faces and hearts we care for still breathe
In the middle of the moment before consciousness is lost forever
Somewhere nowhere who knows where how
In the middle of all we are and will never be now
In the now of this life
I write these lines for all of us
Passing dreams
Beautiful great souls
True human beings
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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What Is A Jewish Poem?
WHAT IS A JEWISH POEM?
What is a Jewish poem?
‘Shema’ is a Jewish poem
Perhaps the Jewish poem-
'Shmoneh Esreh' is comprised of Jewish poems
Nineteen prayers as one-
Our history is filled with Jewish poems-
From the beginning with Abraham and Sarah
Those who have given so much beyond our understanding -
Jewish poems everywhere -
Is each Jewish life a poem and a story also?
Or is it only those who give something to our people and history
Who are worthy of Poetry?
I have known many Jewish poems
People the great world will not know the names of
People who whether they walked humbly or not
Made the lives of others better in some way –
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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I Hear Within Myself The Greater Lines Of Others
I HEAR WITHIN MYSELF THE GREATER LINES OF OTHERS
I hear within myself the greater lines of others-
I began to write ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’
I thought ‘Continuous as the stars that shine and twinkle on the Milky Way’
I felt ‘When you are old and grey and full of sleep’
I thought again ‘Doth God exact day – labor light denied? ”
I felt in my soul ‘Ah love let us be true to one another For the world which lies before us like a land of dreams ‘
Inside me I heard ‘The world is filled with the grandeur of God’
Time after time I repeated ‘O cursed spite that ever I was born to set it right’-
All in me is poetry more than my own
‘Oh to be in England, now that April’s here’
'Oh wild west wind thou breath of autumn's being'
I do not know how to stop the lines -
More in me than myself is the Poetry of others
And where I begin must end a greater Beauty not my own-
Oh Poem Oh Poetry Oh Poets of the Past
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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I Read Borges Poems
I read Borges poems
And the Night opens up a vast and different kind of Memory
Histories of place I have never been
Faces I have never seen
Questions of Identity
Streets I will never walk in
Too long and deserted
To truly contemplate-
Fame and its follies
The delusions of a name
Death and destinies
Games of words
Encyclopedias of strange tribes
Anthropologies of gestures
A voice and tones of thinkers long unknown
Books rewritten
Literature as life
Reading as adventuring
Labyrinths, hourglasses, imaginary swords and battles
And loves whose only realization is their longing
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Lost Lines And The Lost Pages
THE LOST LINES AND THE LOST PAGES LEAVE NO TRACE
The lost lines and the lost pages leave no trace
There is no way to recovery
It is a one – way journey after all
Those who had hoped to live forever by recording all that they have ever done
Have been painfully surprised by the disappearance of the universe
That Asteroid that landed in the heart of all we are
Or perhaps that chain of violence in which our own Ugliness did us in
Or perhaps some other manufactured artificial virus
Or who knows what and why
There is simply too much future Time
Not to die at some point in it
The lost lines and lost pages are small and insignificant
We are in all we are also
Small and insignificant
Why God made us and what God really does
We will never truly understand
Small is all and we are smaller even than the smallest part of any thing
Nothing is and nothing was and nothing will be
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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Post-Modern Poetry
The post-modern poem is the poet's surprise-
It has no agenda but its own interpretation-
It reads the ‘expressive I' as an infinite longing of the soul
To know and be known-
It writes out of many different places
But finds it difficult to call one its home-
It has many names and voices
But none speaks with an authoritative rhythm -
It is only its own alone home
And so I writing it know
It will not be found in me by those who write it as their own-
Chaos, perhaps, is its signature,
And loss of all the ancient rhythms and forms-
It wants to wander where it will as it does -
But I, I thinking back to what we were
And remembering years of reading others
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Poem That Comes From Hearing The Poem Of Another
The poem that comes from hearing the poem of another
And tries to ride on its rhythm
Like the sea on its own waves-
A forced music finding nowhere in itself a music of its own
Because all the poems are melodies made light by more light
As all the poems are dreams made dreamlike by more dreaming-
And we in our poetic fervor hearing that lyric sound
Go round and round again and again
As if we were the music of the stars
When the universe empirically spherical –
But now in this more deeply instrumented time,
When what we see with our eyes is always less than what we measure
Time and Time again tells us that Space and Space again tell us
That all we are in this long distance darkness
Is one small point of light which in its own sad way will fade out before its music endures-
For the stars have only our imagined music
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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There Is The Mood Of A Poem For This Night
THERE IS THE MOOD OF A POEM FOR THIS NIGHT
There is the mood of a poem for this night
There is the mood of a love from long ago
That is forever lost-
There is a mood of a too rainy and too cold night
There is a mood of more inside than saying can mean-
There is a mood of many things-
And all these moods are not one mood
And yet in me now largely indescribable-
For there is a mood which takes the person away
Into a land of dreams and beyond
And another mood and another poem
Which simply stays where it is
In longing for itself-
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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Waking
WAKING
There are so many dreams no one ever realizes
We wake and try to understand where we are
What we have done in all the years seems folly
Nothing can justify this morning or the day to come
We have forgotten who we are and where we have been
The prayer that helps us and connects us back to God
Revives
We begin to live or try to begin to live
Our names are not known and our work uncelebrated
Our songs are not sung and our labors not blessed
We look out and up at the sky and feel light
We do not know how or why or in what way
But we understand that God has given mornings to begin again
We will take the first step and word and taste and sound
And all we feel and be will begin to revive
We will connect ourselves again with where we are
We will begin to work
And as the day slowly comes back to us we will come back to ourselves
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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They Have Words And Promises And They Have Rituals
They have words and they have promises and they have rituals
And they have learned journals and scholarly reviews
And all manner of verification in experiments repeated
And confirmed and reaffirmed again and again-
And they have all this discourse which not only tells us what we are
But enables us to make out of what was before
Something that was not before
And to give a sense of miracle not only to the past but to the future-
They have blessings and kind deeds and moral rewards
And all kinds of good things for those good in their minds
They have everything humans can do and be
And still they are not and we are not God
And cannot be-
Only God can be God
Only God can be God
And we with whatever we do
However great and good
Are not the End and the Beginning
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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