As for the world, it feels as if it’s caving…what with His weight and that of His burden carrying it further, we’re talking Biblical strata, the depths of wells, graveward regression, this reversion of earth, down to the floor of the past, the ocean unswept by the breath: the roofs seem to be raised up to the heights, as if tugged to an invisible, inexistent rainbow by ravens, a few of them on each roof they’re clutching with claws, straining their wings to scar an incision on the face of the sky; higher, luxury apartment buildings turned to underheated tenements…boarderbordered, coldwatered, commonly lived, dumbwaitered, dumbbells uplifted, they inherit more and more floors, and grayer, floors already filled with people already observing, preparing, they’re always preparing for what — to prepare; gray candles newly lit in sills newly filthy, eight families ingathered from Siburbia too north to be the Bronx and with all their extensions to inlaws and who knows who else crammed into the cramp of a single apartment, one room, what is this insanity, is this how they prefer it, why not…newly hewn tenement rooms with a view (a word that’s been assimilated from the most assimilated of tongues, from Latin’s
Through the weather, left light overflowing their sills and the winded wafts the smells of a Shabbos that’ll go on way past the sunset of any wintry night, the dark dawning forever — streets stained with wax, the stain of His tears…these streets and avenues the once fattened arteries of this city, the past’s hardened plenty of late become lean, gaunt, heir to a why enforced hollow: a whiff of smoke as if flicked up from under the chins in its coming, the seethe of its anger, and then the sound of the mob approaching again from behind, led now by those two puny, pugnosed kinder, improbably the two posterboychicks from Downtown called up here to identify whatever it is they think they encountered, they who only know the distraction that are streets at all from their passage to and from school, shul, wherever holy, presently stalking this ritzier, glitzier, who knew from it neighborhood why, to keep the scare in the people, maybe, how He flatters Himself — it’s a gift, to keep the myth of His terror alive, and perhaps, too, to remind them of His own remembrance, how He taints, always sullies their efforts, renders impure, how He ridicules them, and without ever intending to, how the provision of His every existence itself precludes their very own. He stands still an orphan on the island untrafficked, not knowing what to do or not, and making little quiet grunting appeals with His mouthstub at those just passing in advance of the throng: their heads bowed chins to guts, most hurrying past without looking up, murmuring prayers (which: the blessing over avoiding a puddle, the blessing over averting the dreck of a dog or a pigeon, the bracha for concrete and breath), and reciting, also, a host of recently memorized passages of Torah no longer mere quoth endquoth Scripture, not wanting to waste even a moment, especially not on what has to be just another homeless mooch impersonating mensch, a lay leydikgeyer in search of nightly food and drink, lodging, warmth, anything you’d be generous to give. A handful throw Him windscattery bits of old currency, shredded as feed for their livestock they keep on their fireescapes, elevatored and in alleys, where not their cawing and clucking and pecking all night, who can sleep; Him bending down to defraud a defaced quarter from the freeze just as the mob approaches…across the street they’re waiting with no traffic’s law for the light to change to alight on the island, to visit upon His head and hunch a garden’s variety of the graceless, insults, murder — He’s turning from them and hiding His face, slips on the ice and falls.
