The Jewish Angel - Poem

Judaism, Fall, 2002 by David M. Katz

The Jewish Angel

   To have seen the place you're standing
   As if through a huge central eye
   The drafting tools beneath its gaze
   The assembled proof of work done
   At noisy various angles
   That has settled into silence

   The aperture slowly opens
   It is the eye in Moriah
   Framing Abraham and the ram
   Isaac's sane interrogation
   Brightness straining beneath his lids
   On those heights in the clear morning

   The eye of the Jewish angel
   Out of de Chirico's workshop
   Fixes the glance of the watchers
   In a mutually blank stare
   Revelatory of nothing
   Except that they both will wander

   They look for the angel's message
   Listen to leaves for his passage
   In wind that would seal in the words
   On that windless silent morning
   They are mute and sad and yearning
   The knife held glinting in the air

   Nothing's left in the museum
   But the triangle the t-square
   The work of the geometer
   The dimension beyond seeing
   That de Chirico has affirmed
   In painting "The Jewish Angel"

DAVID M. KATZ is a poet and journalist living in New York City. Poems of his have appeared in The Paris Review, The New Republic, and Southwest Review. He is at work on a group of imitations of Hebrew Golden Age poems. His poems appeared in the Summer 2000 issue.