The Book of Isaac
Aidan Semmens
Parlor Press
Anderson, South Carolina
www.parlorpress.com
Parlor Press LLC, Anderson, South Carolina, 29621
© 2013 by Parlor Press
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
S A N: 2 5 4 - 8 8 7 9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Semmens, Aidan.
The book of Isaac / Aidan Semmens.
pages. cm. -- (Free verse editions)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-60235-373-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-60235-374-9 (Adobe ebook) -- ISBN 978-1-60235-375-6 (epub)
I. Title. II. Series: Free verse editions.
PR6069.E395B66 2013
821’.914--dc23
2012044928
Cover design by David Blakesley.
Cover photograph provided by the author.
Printed on acid-free paper.
Parlor Press, LLC is an independent publisher of scholarly and trade titles in print and multimedia formats. This book is available in paperback and ebook formats from Parlor Press on the World Wide Web at http://www.parlorpress.com or through online and brick-and-mortar bookstores. For submission information or to find out about Parlor Press publications, write to Parlor Press, 3015 Brackenberry Drive, Anderson, South Carolina, 29621, or email [email protected].
For IAH & all the subsequent Hourwiches
Contents
this Esdras went up from Babylon as a scribe
bent writing, assiduous pen in hand,
radicalism is not your mistake
for them many living on the earth
our psaltery is laid down on the land,
expound, expound, the vinestocks lie untended
as for us & of art & art, you have expressed, beauty
I conducted you through & sea, at the beginning
as if by you requested I shall not hear
intention of the blower is critical to hearer
in shul & bes-medresh we occupy these text
the woodcarving tradition which delivers
in order not to break the second command
the input viewpoint takes truth ignorant & in disguise;
fair reader’s desire of the girl’s capital
Kropotkin settled with a sense of ease in silence
an imperial world’s population change
the schizoid character of Russian society
& masquerade of revellers; you will carry out to Purim
sound of blows began the dream of Vera
Białystok from London on the reading & critique of Talmud
the café is the universities from the ghetto
bay mir bistu sheyn, to me are you
my dear Vladimir Ilyich, forgive that I do not address you as comrade,
the Russian peasant family alone
Gleb Oospensky in his suspicion stood alone
no wise ruler the shepherd of his flock?
for me & not only for me in those days
to suffer silence is to suffer as a fool
the first edition of Leviathan
I saw you cry like a ship ready to sail
the ground is fully prepared for insurrection
seem to recognise that part of the workers
a parable is told of warring tribes:
here it is, finally got here, the best flour!
ah, pessimist, you do not know the people
for the passéists between we, great Apollo
we threw downward from tsar & kow-tow to these
number me the things that have not yet been