The Song of Solomon, Chapter 4
Some Hebrew Bible poems
Are not too bad.
After all, they are
The words of god
(Reported by stenographers).
But some are plain grotesque.
If I were teaching poetry,
I’d have my students read
The Song of Solomon’s
Fourth chapter,
And cherish
The growls, grins, laughs
Its similes create.
“Behold, you are beautiful, my love.”
Not a bad beginning.
But then comes
The flood—
Divinely wrought similes:
“Your eyes are doves”
“Your hair is like a flock of goats, moving down the slopes of Gilead”
“Your teeth are like” (wait for it)
“a flock of shorn ewes that have come up from the washing, all of which bear twins, and not one of them is bereaved.”
Yahweh, please—
Teeth like shorn ewes,
Each followed by twin lambs
Yearning for a teat?
When my beloved smiles,
I bask in the effulgence
Of shorn postpartum ewes?
Then, a torrent,
Bemused as a mountain waterfall.
“Your lips are like a scarlet thread,”
“Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate,”
“Your neck is like a tower of David, built for an arsenal
Whereon hang a thousand bucklers,
All of them shields of warriors.”
Mama mia! That is one prodigious neck!
But the best
Worst simile
Embedded in the long
And varied history of poetry,
Remains: our beloved’s breasts—
“like two fawns,
twins of a gazelle,
that feed among the lilies.”
Got it? Reclining there,
The most beautiful woman
In the Bible:
Doves for eyes,
Goat hair,
Sheered sheep teeth,
Thread lips,
Pomegranate cheeks,
Arsenal tower neck,
With hungry baby gazelles
For breasts.
We must,
I suppose,
Gratefully
Thank god,
Or its stenographer,
For not imagining
All the bulk
Of that ancient book
In verse.
(6/29/12)