Afaa M. Weaver [USA]

 

Bathsheba
 
Not even white dresses, fresh blossoms
or the despairing angels hovering could change
the fire that seized you the night after
she was through her period and her womb
lay open and fertile, beckoning you,
arousing you, leading like a siren.
 
Not all the concubines combined could deter
the beckoning of history, not even the memory
of how Michal saved your life could break the trance
of Bathsheba as you saw her bathing and allowed lust
to set your breath and soul on fire,
until there could be no euphony but your body with hers
 
emitting the percussion and wail of passion,
until you could have her beneath you, her eyes
widened and brightened by your driving sin.
And when death seemed the answer, you dispatched
it with all the authority of God’s king,
all the madness and delirium of greed and guilt.
 
You chose your love from forbidden quarters,
and Solomon’s soul sang in the marrow of your bones. 
 
(from “Stations in a Dream”,  Dolphin Moon Press 1993,
republished in Multitudes Sarabande Press 2000) 
 

 
David
 
In your old age you adored the lyre.
All the women and all the births
were one wavering image, your trembling body
kept warm by a beautiful girl
you could only turn your eyes to and smile,
caress with the weak hands of a father.
 
A boy’s ambitions can end in dreaming,
or they can be applauded by God
and given the power of metamorphosis,
changing like the angelic host from
wisp and mist to flesh, blood, stone,
wood, and fire—to life’s stock.
 
You looked at Abishag, at her unblemished
figure, the soft call of her curling lips,
the dark hair falling on your shoulder
as she massaged your rigid neck
and rubbed her thighs against yours
to keep the king immortal, but desire was gone.
 
You remembered the countless marriages, the children,
wondered, without love, how could you have dreamed. 

(from “Stations in a Dream”, Dolphin Moon Press 1993
republished in Multitudes Sarabande Press 2000) 
 
 
 
The Praying Jew
 
Seven severe indications of my love for you
were in the wall, flaming like the aura
around the temple at Sinai, speaking
in voices ranging to the imperceptible,
the invisible soprano of hosannahs,
of manna falling like walls of rain at night,
and I awoke grasping for your embrace.
 
Walk with me past the dropping of the moon,
to where we inhabit the ocean and
our sojourn is through the cold timber
of my heart, to its center where you
can kiss it and set the world to beginning,
to creating and recreating itself infinitely,
to its center where I will vanish with you.
 
Hear my soul singing to you, shouting to me,
shimmering like the blinding vision of Ezekiel,
streaming down like the Oral Torah,
from your tongue to the Earth, to hearing.
Hear my soul reaching back to the full cloth
of your breath that rendered it to me.
Hear my prayer of desire for divine love. 
 
(from “Stations in a Dream”, Dolphin Moon Press 1993
republished in Multitudes Sarabande Press 2000)

Author’s Bionote:
 
*Afaa Michael Weaver, previously known as Michael S. Weaver, is primarily a poet and playwright, although he has worked as a free lance journalist, editor, and translator. He was born in 1951 in Baltimore, Maryland, and began his university education in 1968, as a sixteen year old engineering student. In Baltimore he worked in factories from 1970 to 1985, after discontinuing his undergraduate education. In those years as a factory worker he also served honorably in the U.S. military as a member of the Army Reserves. He left the city in 1985 after receiving an NEA fellowship, which led to his acceptance to Brown University’s graduate writing program. His first book, “Water Song”, was published in that same year. His most recent book, “A Fire in the Hills” (Red Hen Press, 2023), won the Paterson Poetry Prize. His other awards in poetry include the 2014 Kingsley Tufts and the Phyllis Wheatley Award. As a playwright, he has received the PDI Award from eta theater in Chicago. The recipient of Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships, Afaa has also received the Wallace Stevens Award, the St. Botolph’s 2019 Distinguished Artist Award, as well as medals from the Beijing Writers Association, and Taiwan’s Artists and Writers Association for his work with contemporary Chinese poetry as a way of continuing his work as a 2002 Fulbright scholar in Taiwan. He is a lifelong student of Chinese language and culture, particularly Daoism. In 2024 he was elected to the Board of Chancellors at the Academy of American Poets. Afaa is Professor Emeritus at Simmons University, and currently a guest faculty member of Sarah Lawrence’s MFA program. His papers are held in the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University. Afaa has published sixteen books of poetry. He is represented by the Shipman Agency.
 
(Photo by  Victoria Smith)