From King Solomon's Journal: Fragment of an Unsent Letter (Date Unknown)
- From King Solomon's Journal:Fragment of an Unsent Letter (Date Unknown)
Hard questions you asked me once, my Sheba, between coal and crystal and diamond.
You launched me like a boat on delirious seas: I was spar, sail and wreck.
We together—now apart—detonated the wind. You, my secret, are hooks and tiniest apertures,
inside of which the moon cruised. You, my secret, like the blown glass of power.
We might know the unknown by the wisdom of things
that are prayers to a prayer. O, exquisite world: yellow jacks, a moth, muslin and ivory,
chariots and shields, my knees locked with yours. Stroke my words, my queen,
the heavy paint of them, their gild and cedar rafters. Must everything dissolve in aloneness?
You and God not visible? You and I holding moving shadows—ink stains on sea? I am a bundle in God's name and laws, satin and hallowed. My God came to me after
destruction. "If and then . . . If and then," says he. Everything conditional pains me
as if between some brightness and disaster. Berries in a cistern. Asters in a well. Needles from a fir tree tether me. Before you both, my God and distant
Sheba, I am defenseless. Nest me in your branches, the brittle thingness of your arms, my dear.
Yerra Sugarman was born in Toronto and lives in New York City. She received the 2005 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry from PEN American Center for her first collection, Forms of Gone (2002), published by Sheep Meadow Press. She has received a Discovery/The Nation Poetry Prize, the Poetry Society of America's George Bogin Memorial Award, a Chicago Literary Award, and an Academy of American Poets Prize, among other distinctions. Her poetry and articles have appeared in numerous publications, and her poems have been translated into French. She holds degrees from Columbia and Concordia Universities, and from The City College of the City University of New York, where she is a Lecturer in English and teaches in the undergraduate and M.F.A. creative writing programs.
