By the Eighth Day There Was No Longer Need

Music: Fugue in B Minor for Organ.
By J.S. Bach. Sequenced by Jim Michmerhuizen.

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Hanukkah Poems

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By the eighth day there was no longer need
Of proof that love had superceded law.
Nor could one longer doubt the fuel-less flame,
Nor longer not revere the holy name.
In faith one finds the aperture of awe,
Each miracle a word that one might read.

Most come upon the truth of what they read
As music on the altar of their need,
Rhapsodic in the ecstasy of awe,
Knowing what they know of love and law:
Underneath some speculative name
Sufficient faith for an eternal flame.

Still, if you lack faith in such a flame
Etched against some words you'll never read,
There's an ocean opened in your name
Holding all the love you'll ever need.

Granted your experience of law:
A touch of grace turns fear to love and awe.
Being of itself engenders awe:
Radiant with talismanic flame,
Interred in language one must sing to read,
Each mystery consanguine with each law;
Lost in the cacophony of need,
A holiness unfettered by a name.
Nor need you be embarrassed by a name,
Determined not to Balkanize your awe:
Love chooses what will satisfy its need,
Intent not on the face but on the flame.
So may pleasure ravish what you read
And beauty be the sun to light the law.

More sweet than miracles is common law.
In reason one finds God without the name.
Do, then, with sublime disinterest read,
In scrupulous indifference and in awe.

Even now there is a holy flame:
Love needs no cause to minister to need.
Life cries for causeless flame to feed its awe,
Even as the law is plain to read.
Nor does it need the blessing of a name.