Ayin

The nothing that there is
And the nothing that is not
The nothing that made something
For a return to nothing
The nothing that is known by negation
The nothing between you and it
The nothing that is you
The nothing that is it
The nothing between you and you
The nothing between it and it
The nothing

At twilight
Down cracked marble steps
You enter the centuries old royal garden
Fog clouding the landscape
Weathered statues
With severed heads and arms
Stand in shadow
Their images reflected in the leaf-strewn ponds
The air overripe with decay
Untended black trees covered with lichen
Bend toward a white sky
Overgrown shrubs destroying
The once precise geometry
Of the gardener

A child's balloon
Its string tangled
In a tree's high branch
Waiting, straining,
For the wind to set it free

To disappear across the border
Or escape into the high mountains
Cover your tracks in the dense forest
Or swim in fathoms beneath the sea
Congregate with snow monkeys
Or with reptiles on the desert floor
You take yourself wherever you go
Under the watchful sun

Desperately clinging to existence
You permit your brain to be scanned, mapped,
And transferred to a computer
Where your consciousness resides
Digitalized among the pulsating lights
And tangled wires
Jolts of memory
Flashes of your life
Appear on a screen
Mother's face
The sun, the sea, the stars,
Fireworks in the park
Your first lover's smile
All coolly surveyed in the circuitry
Detached memories of joy, frustration, sorrow
Days experienced in human flesh
Now mediated through a machine
While busy technicians walk by
In the noisy laboratory

Show the way to the Holy City
Show the way that you shall go
Up to the mountain of the Holy City
Up to the temple of the Lord
Look out over rooftops, over fields of plenty
Look out under a vaulted sky of blue
Give thanks that the Lord has bid you hither
Give praise that the day of peace has come

As you look out the train window
And watch the old buildings go by
You imagine that one day you will wake up
On the wrong side of town
In the wrong bed
With the wrong partner
And that this is all
Just a matter of time