Nicodemus

I 
I went under cover of night 
By back streets and alleyways, 
Not as one secret and ashamed 
But with a natural discretion. 
I passed by a boy and girl 
Embraced against the white wall 
In parts of shadow, parts of light, 
But though I turned my eyes away, my mind shook 
Whether with dryness or their driving blood; 
And the dog howled once in a stone corner.

II 
Rabbi, I said, 
How is a man born, being old? 
From the torn sea into the world 
A man may be forced only the one time 
To suffer the indignation of the child, 
His childish distempers and illnesses. 
I would not, if I could, be born again 
To suffer the miseries of the child, 
The perpetual nearness to tears, 
The book studied through burning eyes, 
The particular malady of being always ruled 
To ends he does not see or understand.

A man may be forced only the one time 
To the slow perception of what is meant 
That is neither final nor sufficient, 
To the slow establishment of a self 
Adequate to the ceremony and respect 
Of other men’s eyes; and to the last 
Knowledge that nothing has been done, 
The bitter bewilderment of his age, 
A master in Israel and still a child.

III
Rabbi, all things in the springtime 
Flower again, but a man may not 
Flower again. I regret 
The sweet smell of lilacs and the new grass 
And the shoots put forth of the cedar 
When we are done with the long winter. 

Rabbi, sorrow has mothered me 
And humiliation been my father, 
But neither the ways of the flesh 
Nor the pride of the spirit took me, 
And I am exalted in Israel 
For all that I know I do not know.

Now the end of my desire is death 
For my hour is almost come. 
I shall not say with Sarah 
That God hath made me to laugh, 
Nor the new word shall not be born 
Out of the dryness of my mouth.

Rabbi, let me go up from Egypt
With Moses to the wilderness of Sinai 
And to the country of the old Canaan 
Where, sweeter than honey, Sarah’s blood 
Darkens the cold cave in the field
And the wild seed of Abraham is cold.

--Howard Nemerov (1921-1991) US poet laureate 1963-1964 and 1988-1990, winner of the National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize, and the Bollingen Prize, from The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov, 1977.

Related Scripture: John 3: 1-17, Lent 2A