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In his collection
of verse, Let Us Be Silent Here, the highly regarded Canadian
poet John B. Lee recounts an eighteen-day journey he made in the spring
of 2011 to Israel and Jordan. He ventures to a prismatic holy land, "a
thus-imagined universe," conceived in terms of Biblical majesties
and saints but peopled today by more earthbound beings. Whether beneath
a sycamore near Capernaum or describing the almost ineluctable feeling
of bobbing in the Dead Sea, Lee evokes at once light and darkness, the
uplifted and the fallen as he recounts his visit. He is at once an innocent
abroad and a keen observer of the disconnect between idealism and reality.
In this series of meditations, Lee deploys an accomplished poet's gift
for capturing transcendent meaning in the shards of everyday life.
Lee eloquently searches
for Truth, rooted in scripture or in reality, in the heavens or on earth,
though he realizes that it is found somewhere between them. His verse
acknowledges the cruelty of human foibles that sends idealism crashing
against
.................................................................that
last huzza, the one
.................................................................you
might hear
.................................................................as
the truest truth
.................................................................in
all the most
.................................................................lasting
and honest language
.................................................................of
history.
At issue is the search
for meaning even when the ultimate truth, our mortality, would seem to
ridicule the very possibility of significance in temporal existence. Following
his wanderings in a sacred place where people, not the Divine, preside,
Lee nobly and lyrically conducts and contemplates his investigations.
Sacred Turf
In The War of Brooms, set in the Church of the Nativity, Lee depicts
the ungodly rivalry of priests wielding brooms as weapons in a holy war
against the brothers of another sect. The poet reflects on the irony of
each group vying for the glory of heaven by claiming contested turf. Of
this, the poet comments pithily:
.................................................................my
uncle
.................................................................in
the north Atlantic
.................................................................dropping
the empty casket
.................................................................of
his best friend
.................................................................into
the dark chill
.................................................................of
those war-torn waters
.................................................................lost
his faith
.................................................................for
less than this
Lee proceeds to consider territoriality in a broader context, the conflict
between Israeli and Arabs. In Linen and Wool, the poet grieves
for this "two-mothered earth," Israel/Palestine and positions
the conflict in terms of the Biblical injunction against donning a garment
made of both wool and linen (shatnez) - what the Israeli poet Yehuda Amihai,
who he greatly admires (along with the Palestinian Mahmoud Darwish), calls
"the linsey-woolsey of our being together…" One
does not wish for anyone to accept the fatalistic implication of this
view, that there is no solution to the conflict but a non-solution: To
rent the garment leaves two unacceptable parts of an intolerable whole.
The Beauty of the
Mundane
Lee distinguishes himself as a poet of note both through his skillfulness
in language and acuity and also in his capacity for insight. In various
poems that record the more mundane aspects of his travels, he finds meaning
and grace, even in the gauche. In Riding a Camel at Wadi Rum, after
describing a most uncouth dromedary, he confers on the camel almost cosmic
meaning.
.................................................................but
what a lovely thing
.................................................................to
watch
.................................................................the
gentle plushness
.................................................................of
a camel's foot
.................................................................to
see
.................................................................the
ghost of where we were
.................................................................appearing
in our wake
.................................................................like
thread draw
.................................................................from
beneath a dream.
Similarly, Lee's ability
to seize the sensual is estimable, as in Making Love in the Holy Land
where he writes:
.................................................................the
spirit bone bent like a willow
.................................................................seeking
the bloom of waves
.................................................................on
the endless weeping of an ever-fragrant sea
.................................................................ah
Solomon-you with your
.................................................................spiced
wine, your lilies
.................................................................and
myrrh
.................................................................feeding
in the closed garden
.................................................................on
pomegranate and pleasant fruits
.................................................................with
your hand
.................................................................like
the shadow of fire
.................................................................you
were here with me
.................................................................as
I spoke from sleep
.................................................................the
seal of ash upon my arm
.................................................................in
vanishing darkness
.................................................................I
embrace my love with an ochre palm
At times John B. Lee
nimbly conveys surprising irony, especially in the Jordan poems, which
contrasts with the dream-like tone of his soulful wanderings amidst ruins
in Israel.
Matters of the Soul
But matters of the soul are never far from the essence of Lee's poems
in Let Us Be Silent Here. The earnestness of his meditations
is profound, as in Wishful, which reflects on his experience at
the Western Wall.
.................................................................as
now
.................................................................in
the throng
.................................................................of
devotion
.................................................................with
black-clad men
.................................................................nodding
at the wall
.................................................................I
wish I weren't
.................................................................so
full of doubt
.................................................................the
paltry sorrow of my palm
.................................................................one
lifeline's dark caress
.................................................................in
this, I feel the wish of souls
.................................................................my
hand
.................................................................upon
the fragile mortar
.................................................................of
such deep belief
.................................................................I
hear a language
.................................................................that
I cannot speak
And concerning matters of faith, John B. Lee readily grasps the universal
message of the Holocaust in his poem, A Sadder Music: meditation on
Yad Vashem,
.................................................................oh
reverent grief
.................................................................that
war is done
.................................................................those
lives
.................................................................have
lined the earth with bones
.................................................................like
rootwork of a thousand-thousand-thousand
.................................................................wind-broken
trees
.................................................................the
soul of man
.................................................................grimes
over
.................................................................like
a lamp of oil
.................................................................and
shame shines through
.................................................................the
tainted light we touch
.................................................................that
touches all.
The reader leaves
the poem burdened by the classic dilemma of the post-Holocaust era: How
can there be faith coexistent with the "tainted light" that
surrounds us after humanity's ultimate fall?
.
Human Meaning
The human condition,
a fusion of all that is light and all that is darkness, does not, in Lee's
worldview, condemn us to meaningless. Like Camus, Lee finds redemption
in the augustness of human travail, as in Night Sky Over Jerusalem
where he writes:
.................................................................the
closest I will ever come
.................................................................to
seeing
.................................................................through
the eyes
.................................................................of
the Messiah
.................................................................this
mask of stars
.................................................................this
moon
.................................................................pale
as a sickly child
.................................................................and
in the daylight
.................................................................blue
heaven blooms
.................................................................with
those invisible
.................................................................constellations
.................................................................subsumed
by the sun
There, in Jerusalem,
peering into the nocturnal sky of the eternal city where the polarity
between doubt and belief beguiles, Lee finds meaning
.................................................................pull
the bow on the arrow of time
.................................................................from
nock to tip
.................................................................at
this motionless moment
.................................................................the
quiver is full
.................................................................as
a clutch of ornamental reeds
.................................................................and
the one wound I make is doubt
.................................................................and
the other
.................................................................pure
belief, and I feel
.................................................................in
the presence of placeless place
.................................................................and
in the absence of timeless time
.................................................................a
common faith
.................................................................in
the sorrowful joy
.................................................................of
letting the arrow sing.
Let Us Be Silent
Here is a highly laudable contemplation of this world where "blue
heaven blooms" in the sunlight, which masks the stars and their constellations,
the interface of what is known and what might be. Lee's poems resonate
with transcendence. The collection chronicles the existential probing
of a poetic spirit as he moves across a landscape that is both mythic
and true.
-------------------------
Yosef Gotlieb,
a poet and novelist who resides outside of Jerusalem, is the author, most
recently, of Rise, A Novel of Contemporary Israel. His blog, Issues
of the Day, appears on his website at www.ysgotlieb.net.
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