3.16.2004

This building is up the street (Morris Ave.) from the site of the poem posted yesterday.

TEMPLE EMANU-EL



Unlike the capitol’s bold marble, rivaling Rome,
your simple curve (amid rooftop vernacular)
peeks from the hillside; through tender air
morning sunlight sketches in your dome.


A line is only a figure for perfection;
Immeasurability need call nowhere home;
yet light crowns your six-sided honeycomb
as if to meld the bleakest contradiction.


Labor dresses, lightly, weighty stone.
Liberty’s the child of constant care.
This gold almond (hovering hive-sphere,
so modest) evens odds to unison.


The burden of the Law goes singing, here;
mankind, infinitude, through droning time
fused in heart’s foundation, frame a rhyme:
scenting ascents (attunement) everywhere.

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