Envy
or Dust
I
sit at my desk, looking at the dust:
The
dust is envious of the eraser;
I
can see it in the angle of the light.
The
eraser is envious of the pen,
And
always has been. The pen, in turn,
Lying
by the empty cup,
Is
envious of the white page,
Still
blank. And the page,
Absurd
as it seems,
Has
grown envious, I see,
Of
the screen on my Mac desktop.
This
is something I didn't expect from the page
There
in its blank whiteness.
I
check my email: mostly junk.
There's
one letter though
From
an Australian who wants to argue;
He
argues with me needlessly--
Theology
and poetics.
Neither
of us is up to this debate.
The
Australian is envious of me,
It's
obvious. Though I wouldn't
Rate
myself higher than him,
Still
I can read it there: envy.
And
as for me, I am
Envious
of Max, now in Milan,
Who
is envious of Kafka--
Of
Kafka's spare, perfect prose--
The
same Kafka who was envious of Moses
(Though
he kept a good humor about it)
While
Moses, it is said,
Was
envious of Pharaoh,
And
so led the people out
Behind
the dust storms of a new God.
And
because of his burning envy
Moses
never entered the Promised Land.
For
this God who came to him
Was
a jealous God:
He
said so Himself many times,
And
wouldn't allow His jealousy to be usurped
By
anyone--not by Marduk, nor Baal, nor the Sun.
And
certainly not by Moses.
And
the Sun in those days was called
Amun-Ra,
or Aten.
This
was in the days before Moses,
The
days before the dust storms
On
the Sinai.
E.M.
March,
2005
Email: inthemargins03@hotmail.com
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