Caro’s Table


Beneath the immaculate linen and 
those cotton socks two comely ankles swell.  
Is to think of them to be led astray?  
To contemplate how the bones flow so, to 
wonder what is bone, what flesh, stroking 
with one’s mind the unrepeatably dear
concavity between shin and calf, a
triumph of trillions of contingencies; 
to caress even the curt yet tender words, the 
firm Teutonic nouns—ankle, thigh, throat,
knee, brow, breast—into which a body can 
be butchered or beloved?  Nudity,  
is vast, he warns, particularly woman’s, 
albeit Solomon himself seems to  
crawl like some besotted beetle hopeless 
of the whole so seeking mastery of parts, 
anatomizing desire with 
analogies—breasts like twin fawns, teeth 
like shorn ewes—a pastoral, goatish lust
born of a mind that likewise conceived the 
Temple cubit by cubit.  Is her hair 
naked, her contralto nude only because 
their tones are beautiful to beguile 
and divert, because all that is unclothed 
even in imagination must distract
us from our joyless prayers and loveless 
commandments, thwarting the profane
redemption of modest metaphor?
Even “the voice of a singing woman,”
the sage chides, is nudity, naked sound 
that dissipates thoughts of a jealous 
God whose table must be primly laid, 
no ankles touched beneath its spotless cloth.


Author's Note:  “The concept of nudity is vast, chiefly as regards women; any portion of the body that is usually covered is nudity…. In short, nudity is everything that might attract the attention of men, distracting them from the thought of God….”  [From Primo Levi, “Ritual and Laughter,” an essay on Joseph Caro’s 16th-century compendium of Jewish law Shulkhàn Arùkh (The Set Table), in Other People’s Trades, translated by Raymond Rosenthal, New York, Summit Books, 1989, p. 210]

“Caro’s Table” first appeared in Sou’wester



Diva


The Diva awakes on the morning after
she has sung, after the champagne and laughter,
snatches up the papers but ignores the news
hunting for her name in the reviews.
Then, pouncing like a tomcat on a vole,
she reads, Madam has made her own the role,
her tempi perfect, not too slow or fast;
she was divine—like the entire cast.
The Diva screeches; everyone’s afraid.
“What’s wrong, Madam?” inquires the trembling maid.
She rends the newsprint with a long, red nail:
“My triumph’s hollow—unless others fail.”


“Diva” first appeared in Light Quarterly