Irriguum Superius
Irriguum Superius
Andrew Kuiper
No deity and no one but an envious person takes pleasure in my lack of power and misfortune, nor regards as virtue our tears, sobbing, fears and other such things that are signs of a powerless spirit.
— Spinoza, Ethics, IVDo not give me a barren heart
Like the childless womb that was Israel’s
Or eyes like dry breasts
— St. Gregory of Narek
Our eyes form altars
Or so the sages teach
Salt stings a lip
Breast heaves—breath falters
Announcing a coming sacrifice of tears
Why should we weep with ocean water?
Why not something more humane?
Our eyes renewing formless wastes
A blessed rage for chaos
A drenched altar serves God best
If Elijah is any example
The flaming tongues of heaven
Proved their thirst for all the water
Inside twelve jars and a shallow trench
As much as the blood of any bull
The Lord of Hosts can’t seem to commit
El flirts with Thales and Heraclitus both
Now water, now fire rules and ends all things
As moistened dust and baked clay
I think we have a right to know—which is it?
I read a bright and bewildering book
That claimed the sea would be no more
And all tears would be wiped away
But I wouldn't care to inhabit
An earth without a stretch of shoreline
Or a body with traces of old irrigation
Where working tear ducts should be
I mean, for God's sake (and ours as well)
we have to blink, don't we?
Unless each resurrected eye socket holds
Nothing but luminous carbuncles
Forever reflecting the metallic gleam
Of that perfectly cubed and immaculately golden
Utterly sterling and sterile New Jerusalem
The rabbis used to say
That if a passage of the Torah
Refused to reveal its secrets
Or seemed scandalously inane
The exegete should weep
With the kind of fearful desire that makes
Your hair stand on end
And those earthly tears
Would invoke the tears of heaven
Like in the days of Noah
When the deep recesses of the earth
and the windows of heaven
Broke open to cleanse the world
And make things grow again
Now that I think about it
I forgot a few pages
From that bright and baffling book
Something living does rush through the streets of that strange city
A roaring, churning, river gushing from the abyss beneath the throne
And a tree with fruit and leaves that do not wither
Claws its roots into that rich supernal clay
Tears too then, probably
Not mixed with shame
Naked but unafraid
Endlessly searching an unfathomable sea
Diving for the fiery pearl
Of divinity
Andrew Kuiper
Poet & Writer
Andrew lives in Hillsdale, Michigan with his wife and three children. He has been published in The Regensburg Forum, Touchstone Magazine, The Imaginative Conservative, Church Life Journal, Macrina Magazine and The Lamp. He is the main contributor to the online theological blog at publishing company Ex Fontibus and co-editor of a volume of Nicholas of Cusa translations (forthcoming Notre Dame University Press).
Photography by Jonathan Kopf