Autumn Thoughts

Poems of Samuel Zinner Excerpted from Autumn Thoughts (Fargo, North Dakota: North Dakota State University, 2003) The Canticle of Canticles The tree of apples and glass moon-show me your face, the one in the desert, and what is hidden within. You have wounded my heart with one of your eyes; honey and milk on your tongue, the drops of the night. An army; turn away your eyes from me, they have made me a ghost fair as the moon. Who is this in the desert? Under the apple tree I raised you up. Make me hear your voice. There is a world --somewhere-where one seeks, and finds tears of fire silent pain hidden flowers small hands a sky of soft shadows There is such a world --somewhere-- Sefirot Sonnets I Brilliant light from darkness, dazzling dance of fire jewels from the four winds of creation, unio mystica. Soft and touched music of the three-winged man of dust ascending chants on ancient wood in unending rain. Sefirot Sonnets II The many-eyed flying ones will hold precious stones in your hands. Transcend all form, all thought. Deus, Deus from the beginning, there is water. Sefirot Sonnets III Deus, Deus ring the bells in the grass mist of morning. In powers will I know you, in ashes I hold the image and likeness of your face. Sefirot Sonnets IV The face of morning, the tree of jewels from eternity. Great is the Mystery of the east, of flowing streams among the stars of God; in seven eyes we see. Sefirot Sonnets V Jewels of fire flowing on the voices of wings in the infinite chariot of eternal life. Lightning in the sky of weeping prophets in ash and stone, in desert exile. Deus of infinity, in the desert of our night. Descending Thoughts, II Spirits fill the air, floating over the grass, ascending and descending, moving the leaves in trees. One solitude bird weeps at the empty skies between flowers. His isolation is sacred because he weeps never wanting to be heard. This one bird comprehends mortality more superbly than human beings reading philosophy books in the night of candles. Winter will come, as always. The bird will be silent then. The fire of mountains, oh wordless night beneath the tree of apples. To remain in darkness, You in the landscape of gardens, The fire of fountains. These windows, streets, and you, Silence of faces gone; The distance of trees and moon. On a table--a nocturnal book, destiny of shadows. Leningrad 1935 We picked cherries in the Leningrad sun; dead white blossoms floated like ghosts in the glass wind. The rain of dreams-I awoke to dry, barren steppes of rose-red clay and hawks heading for mysterious beast prints of midnight. The stars of our storm descended deathless, and the lilacs sang the burning question of our unseen lives: “Leningrad, my love, beautiful as an army in array.” November 29, 2001 The Silence of Memory For Sergey Zakharian and Irina Vykhodtseva The wind of fate blows over land and time; clouds from the horizon of hope hang dark and sacred. The violence of space and decades of wolves in the desert of our years, the beasts of eternal night sing softly on the mountains of battle and in epic tales of ancient conflict. In the end, a warrior speaks of leaves and timeless trees on the fields of fire and silent memory. The cemetery of your eyes, Your glance is a grave. And again--the birds of death on silent mountains, And the trees of rain close their eyes.