Maimonides in Cairo

Like our fathers, I was driven to the desert.Córdoba is nothing but a ghost to me now,A light impression in the lined Egyptian sand.The Roman Bridge, with its promise of transition,It suggestion of merger and blending, still stands—Or so I’m told—but it’s all ruins in my mind.History marches on. We are forever exiles,Wanderers in the desert, flogged by the whips ofGenes, or disobedience, or the human race.

And there are other tragedies: tiny siegesThat make us exiles even from one another.My brother—may his memory be blessed—saw hopeFor renewal in the East, sailed toward India,And drowned in that turquoise sea, his light extinguishedFor all time. His wife and daughter, who stayed behind,Lived in my house and watched me crumple into bedFor weeks, then months, then almost a year, the desertSpreading, perceptibly, every day. My brother,My student, my saint. What more could ever be said?

But there must be other bridges, other oceansLurking beneath the choking Sinai sand. I’ve learned,My friends, the ways that life can cut you off from them—The dusk it makes of all our hopes, and dreams, and plans.And yet the lightning flashes through the night. The bookIs faint, and we can read it only in snatches,The seconds that we wrest from darkness. In between,We must meditate on the words that came before.

But we always wait for more—the meaning beneathThe meaning, which comes in spurts of inspiration,Then dries back up, perhaps not to return. Praise beHis name regardless, His regardless name. And joinMe in the sacred hermeneutic act, the steles

We erect in desert sand, the billion-wordedCommentary that digs through the polished silverTo find the gold God, praise be His name, buried there.