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Book A: Nominative part one: Isaak (from Genealogy of the First Person)
ii. isaak I watch light fracture, shape itself along the bronze edge. it radiates out of the hip of my father; it rises. the sea is vastly overhead. pine and cedar spindles tinge and reverberate the knife’s call. everything smolders beneath the midday sun. something from below. from above—its arcing sea-wave, a wave of pale air, a voice, a temblor, an open storm.
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* * *
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I ……… am sacrifice.
I ………. am paradox.
(unfathomed;
unresolved.)
I ………. am promise, covenant—future in the instant; presence.
a people thousandfold like stars.
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* * *
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through the dust rising
like daybreak
behind the pack-animals
mountain of uncertainty, of
promise.
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* * *
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eyes whirl ………. to the light, in
the light.
the light
is the message,… .. an angel
of the g-d.
all eyes
roll towards the teeming waters
above us.
“Abraäm
Abraäm” [22:11]
..
.
the voice of g-d mirrors
itself and all
else within the mirror of it-
-self. .. a window.
………….a voice
…………………….of mirrors.
empties itself in the paradox, the double. I hear
light
from .. the very center of his bronze knife. speech
flags
the air distancing light …. earth … perpetual waters of the above.
.
“you
see
I.” [22:11]
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an angel is a lightning-tip, a
ledge
of primeval
water. a word
a vessel— …….. lightning strikes, reduces itself
………………………… on the surface of heaven.
volting heavens of a worded sea, angel:
.
“Not upon
the neutral ground
the play with no player
Never.” [22:12]
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* * *
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I watch light fracture, shape itself along the bronze edge. bronze light radiates out of the hand of my father; it rises. it falls on the dry earth. the sea is vastly overhead. pine and cedar spindles tinge and reverberate the knife’s call. everything smolders beneath the midday sun. something from below. from above—its arcing sea wave, a wave of pale air, a voice, a temblor, an open storm. a storm of precipice, open, unbroken. immanence in a torrent upon my eyes.
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* * *
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negatives slit
the fabric of vocables, air;
earth
rent on a …. seam, a shorn
jagged edge of too too solid flesh,
split.
.
I …………am not
the hewn pine, not
the torches’ resin, the pyre’s
ember.
not ……… the father, is
………………..not the blade is
…not.. the light. light
…………..is not the sound, not fury.
sound …. is not voice; voice not echo.
…….echo
…….is not light.
I ….. am not messenger, but
……………………….the message, the sign.
.
.
the chasm of heaven and earth and the chasm
once more of earth as air is
I:
……………….self, …………… fissure.
.
.
plural …………is the number of the first
………………………………………………..person; negation inside self; negation
.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………&
.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………its other.
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* * *
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through the dust rising
like daybreak
behind the pack-animals
mountain of uncertainty.
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* *
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I …………………………….. am ……………………………. now.
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*
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[the moment is the self, an eternally sudden ‘now’ and the present tense as such; victim to the annihilation of the moment into its next instance. the self, as isaak, is sacrifice to the ephemeral, is the ephemeral in its flashpoint, the day’s relentless arc to later day and later day and twilight and night.
the moment, as isaak, works as an object to others, for others; a blank in the continuum of willing, not as isolated units that accumulate to the whole of time, but instances of a hurling out or hurling into the path of others; of the self. a suspension of the ethical: not mere conformity with universal—which requires no such suspension because the ethical always presents itself as the ground and backdrop on & in which the individual acts and for the sake of which the individual commits the tragic ethical action (city, people, et cetera)—but an outburst from the universal into the region of faith, whose field is the absurd.
isaak is no ethically invested institution but a beating heart straining itself to live as its individuality on the field of the absurd, the ‘apart from the silence, the unspoken-ness of what is.’
isaak is the ego in his aspect of the beating heart upon the ground of the absurd; the object of a divine promise; paradox. all that is ethical depends on the ego and its preservation, while faith and its unspeakable depth hinges on the will to sacrifice it into the starless void of the eternal: the very essence of the ego at rest on the knife’s edge. the threat of immanent and absolute annihilation renders the ego in its most interior moment, the moment of its initial posture towards the exterior in faith.]
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* * *
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I watch light fracture my reflection along the bronze edge. it radiates out of the eyes of my father; it rises. the sea is vastly overhead. pine and cedar spindles tinge and reverberate the knife’s voice. everything trembles beneath the midday sun. from above— a voice, its arcing sea-wave, an open storm.
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* * *
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still
a word ….. atom- ….. -izes
i
i
now ……..a focus, a
…………………center in flames.
…………………still, one: an offering
…………………of smoke; dis-
…………………………………….-integra-
…………………………………………………-tion.
rise I like unto stars, ten-thousand eyes of heaven written on the name I am (given).
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I ……………………………. am ……………………………. given.
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* * *
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first, my voice says:
…………………………………..“father.” [22:7]
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I am a sacrifice replaced by a ram on the mountaintop.
there is a pyre beneath every
action I take. when
will the god arrive to spirit
away this volatility?
.
this frailty—
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* * *
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and
inside this
frailty, spirited away as …. i
……………………as:
laughter.
i: … the laugh of an elder upon an eternity of parchment, of sand
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* * *
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and…….. called an angel of the lord
……Abraäm, again
……out of heaven, speaking
.
just as the stars of heaven
and just as the sand gristing the
sea’s lip,
a blessing to you, where blood is
water to flow
into water, where
bone is smoke
for the air, where
my voice is all—
.
turned away Abraäm toward the children of his own and uprising they made their way together toward the spring of the oath. and down settled Abraäm upon spring of the oath. [22:15-19]
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* * *.
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I am light fractured along the bronze edge of the g-d’s voice. I radiate out of the mouth of earth, and of sea, and of air. heaven is vast. the earth is blood and emanating the knife’s voice of blood. everything bleeds under the sun. something stirs itself up from below. from above, something has fallen, something risen, a wave of blood-tinged air, a voice of water, an open storm. where I end the world quivers, sands give way into stars. a merciless sky.
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* * *
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through the dust rising
like daybreak
behind the pack-animals
mountain of certainty, of
promise.
—D. M. Spitzer
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After undertaking graduate studies in liberal arts, philosophy, and classics (each at different institutions), D. M. Spitzer completed a Master of Fine Arts in writing (poetry) at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Mr. Spitzer’s first book, A Heaven Wrought of Iron, will be published by Etruscan Press in Spring/Summer 2016. Current poetic projects include: the afterword to a collection called mousika, which presents transfigurations of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets & the Latin texts of the psalms used by Igor Stravinsky in his Symphony of Psalms; an essay to accompany a new transfiguration of the poem by the early Greek philosopher Parmenides, tentatively (re-) titled Figures of Being; and continued work on the large-scale hybrid project Genealogy of the First Person. In fall, 2015, Mr. Spitzer will begin work on a Ph.D. in comparative literature where he plans to concentrate on the relationship of poetry to philosophy as it occurs in early Greek thinking and the work of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and others. He lives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, with his wife & their three children.
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