Shabbat love poem

Judaism, Fall, 1995 by Jay Ladin

for c

It was the week the Tabernacle was finished.

The last skins were sewn together,

the brass mirrors beaten into lavers.

It was spring in the desert. Fresh sun glinted

on fine gold threads.

Rocks rang with iron hammers.

Small, wise lizards with scarlet heads

darted between crumbling clefts.

In the margins of the text, a Rabbi had written,

"And so the wound was healed."

In the kitchen, you are running water.

Making something clean again.

As I turn the page, I hear you singing.

The Tabernacle is completed.

The spirit of God descends.

Jay Ladin teaches literature at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University. His poetry has been widely published in anthologies, most recently Men of Our Time (University of Georgia Press) and literary magazines, including Parnassus: Poetry in Review. The Minnesota Review, Puerto del Sol, and Exquisite Corpse, and is forthcoming in Turnstile.