[William A. Baurle]

Crushing poem, John.** It reminds me of some of the more God-critical poems of one of my favorite poets (at one time my favorite poet), Menke Katz. Katz doesn't find "no God" as Amichai seems to in this poem, but he is extremely critical of God, and goes about it fearlessly. The Big Kahuna's Big, after all, and He/She can take it. Who needs a shrinking-violet god who can't handle criticism? I guess certain people do. I shouldn't be so flippant.

Technical problem: I see quotation marks at the end of the poem but I can't find where the quote begins?

J.D. McClatchy's The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry contains many of Amichai's poems, but not that one. Thanks!

*

I just discovered a beaut' from a poet I've only known from two or three anthologies, and those being old ones. I decided to finally do a search, and I was delighted to see he has a website, with an offering of poems. The first one I read hit me in the gut. It feels like it just couldn't have been an accident to have thought to look for this particular poet at this particular time, and to find a poem that hits me so hard, no less, being that it's along the lines of what I've been thinking obsessively about: The possibility* of God, or a god-like Being, making mistakes, and bungling things up, and trying like hell to fix things.

*Nota: I say "possibility". I am not putting forth a proposition to be considered as an actual hypothesis - I'm just a poet (I hope that's what I am, because if I'm not, boy oh boy do I ever need to find another hobby) thinking out loud, wearing his heart, and his few remaining marbles, on his sleeve.

On to the poem, which by the way is formatted with a lot of indentation on the web-page, but I will not take the trouble to do it here, as it requires too many x's and too much finger work:

**Edited in 4.10.17: just click "quote" and you can see the proper indentation.

***

Lot's Wife

Lot’s wife,
she knew.
But how little
we learn about her.
Some say
she was named Edith, but later
she may have
taken a different name, a
different language,
in another country. Was she
sad, as they claimed,
and disobedient to turn and look?
Was she punished, as they claimed,
and became a pillar of salt?

Some say she
and the others
had seen it coming,
long before the two angels
appeared
with their warning of
catastrophe.

God would try and fail

(again).

The old methods, napalm,
mass slaughter,
would lead where
they usually led: guerrilla war,
resistance that lasts for
centuries; underground
networks
where pleasure makes its own
rules, identities are hidden and
the labyrinth of tunnels grows
ever longer and
deeper.

I leave it for you to decide. The supposed winners
write these tales.

Some say
she was part of the underground
and her disguise worked and she
vanished into history leaving
behind only a story still taken as a warning
and a truth.

— Lou Lipsitz

***
**I hope to be able to say something about your poem in Metrical, once I get my thoughts about it collected sufficiently. May take a few hours, or a few days...but it will come.