Creative Work
timewound
Eniot R. Wolfson
lecus not
talk about
beginnings that end
or endings that begin
let us not
talk about
the passing of time
for time heals
all wounds
but the wound
thats time
lec us seek not
to remember
the pain of pleasure
or to forget
the pleasure of pain
lecus seek not
to look behind
orto look ahead
let us embrace
this moment
the limitless sea
dusky and daunting
clanking against
speckled rock
Shofar 39.2 (2021): 2flapping in the wind
winding down
exernity’s clock
let us take hold today
of tomorrow's now
that shall never be
different or the same
Creative Work 229
Summer 2021230 Eliot. Wotton
solitude of night
in solitude of night
i fumble to fetch
feet unfettered
dancing frantically
as time pirouettes
around pillars of lament
deafening the darkness
illumining the grief
apparently nonexistent
fidelity of nonbelief
slicing the silence
binding the brokenness
love lifes its burden
coo burdensome to life
forlorn and adrift
we are alone together
secking shelter
and one more chance
to cower cowardly
before the blindness
of too much sight
in solitude of night
yom kippur
2014
Shofar 39.2low mass
in christ
twittering
distances
r00 deep
to delineate
timeloop
twisted
on tweets
of scorn
traversing
bridges
breathlessly
batcered
grasping
comforts
methodically
misconstrued
between space
of nospace
and nospace
of space
impulsively
misguided
by vestments
of atonement
we procure
bur squander
in the summer
of our autumn
even the wailing
cannot curtail
love's dissolution
Creative Work 231232 Eliot. Wotton
befindlichkeit
from well of fire
timelessly time flow
at roots disjointedly
her breasts bleeding
river of love's rage
shackling the heart
to flowers fading
like august storm
leaving no imprint
on memory of oblivion
she came already gone
remembering the forgotten
pain of painlessness
suffering maleficent bliss
lifting like lilac mist
over cathedral gloom
bustling shards of doom
and tormented tongues
silencly capitulating
in absence of touch
even ghosts we conjure
t00 cumbersome to clutch
june 9, 2015
pragueCreative Work 233,
convalescing
beware of mirrors
inverting shadow and light
00 shallow to compute
in night revealing day
concealing night
we walk bewitched
exuberant in our slumber
as birds croon silently
beneath stars luminescent
grumbling in gloom of dusk
settling on antiquated scars
love's balm cannot repair
Summer 2021294 Bt Wotson
ne‘ilah
lower waters weeping
from loneliness
that must be endured
in exile of spite
as upper waters raging
from tears they cannot spill
on open hearts closing gate
ending the end that cannot end
therein lies the hope
but time has cut its feet
on rocks of regret
too onerous to lift
oo flimsy to discardCreative Work 235)
CONTRIBUTOR
Elliot R. Wolfson, a Fellow of the American Academy of Jewish Research
and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, is the Marsha and Jay
Glazer Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies and Distinguished Professor of
Religion at University of California, Santa Barbara, He is the author of
many publications including Through a Speculum That Shines: Vision and
Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (1994); Language,
Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and the Poetic Imagination (2005);
Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death (2006); Venturing
Beyond—Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism (2006); Open Secret
Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel
Schneerson (2009); A Dream Interpreted within a Dream: Oneiropoiesis
and the Prism of Imagination (2011); Giving beyond the Gift: Apophasis and
Overcoming Theomania (2014); Elliot R. Wolfion: Poetic Thinking (2013);
The Duplicity of Philosophy’s Shadow: Heidegger, Nazism and the Jewish
Other (2018); Heidegger and Kabbalah: Hidden Gnosis and the Path of
Poiesis (2019); and Suffering Time: Philosophical, Kabbalistic, and Hasidic
Reflections on Temporality (2021).
Summer