Promethea Interprets Talmud

While Dying in the Rest Home

Go ahead. It’s time. Ask if you are here.

Ask what, if any, is the difference between

right and wrong. Now forget what you

believe is right. Some if not all of it has likely

changed, before you even thought to ask.

When right became a casualty of too much

unstructured time spent with wrong.

Like turning to detour down your beloved

old farm path to find it sere and overgrown.

Disappeared from your record, just like

that. The way everything you take as real

evaporates in the keen blister of an old wound

polished raw. Or a new one, in more or less

the same spot.

Ask. Conjure the anamnesis of your original

self, immersed in a never-ending unknowing.

Where only the question, still wordless on

your parted suckling lips, was all that mattered.

You, the question, and someone wiser to

patiently deliver the truth. As if you would

fathom what to do with such a thing, if it even

existed. Or could be counted on never to change.

Ask. Shake the wishful mirage from your eyes.

Pretend that desire is not the architect of your fate.

That you are in command of right and wrong,

the certainty that you are here, saddling

ghosted horses in gossamer cribs, taking stock

of your many golden hectares, late September light

lazily tarrying on farm paths you insist have not

given way to another life not yet lived or remembered.

Ask, damn it. Then admit how well you know

the persistent deceit of will.

ArLiJo, August 2022, Issue 163