DIVINATION
For Andra Jakstaite
I am the diviner. The wandering rabbis search for wells, but only I know how deep they are and where they are. In their order of things, they go ahead, I go behind. In my order of things, they don’t even exist – lavish absence. This is a syllogism of the suspended middle. I integrate faith and reason in a way that the patriarchs don’t. But they still need me to tell them how grace can remain a free gift. The word is made strange in their scrying. “Who has ever heard of a feminist diviner?,” they ask. That’s because I don’t believe in their stolisomancy, sortilege, and scarpomancy. “What’s the word for today?” they ask. And I say: “Mercury. Have you ever wondered why he’s always depicted on one foot? On top of a building, if a statue? Get your cameras and shoot the one in Copenhagen.” “Oh, come on,” they go. “Why do we have to do this?” – Because it’s spring, and because you’re poets.
(Photos: courtesy of and by Andra Jakstaite; painting, CE, after the motif in the photo)
I am the diviner. The wandering rabbis search for wells, but only I know how deep they are and where they are. In their order of things, they go ahead, I go behind. In my order of things, they don’t even exist – lavish absence. This is a syllogism of the suspended middle. I integrate faith and reason in a way that the patriarchs don’t. But they still need me to tell them how grace can remain a free gift. The word is made strange in their scrying. “Who has ever heard of a feminist diviner?,” they ask. That’s because I don’t believe in their stolisomancy, sortilege, and scarpomancy. “What’s the word for today?” they ask. And I say: “Mercury. Have you ever wondered why he’s always depicted on one foot? On top of a building, if a statue? Get your cameras and shoot the one in Copenhagen.” “Oh, come on,” they go. “Why do we have to do this?” – Because it’s spring, and because you’re poets.
(Photos: courtesy of and by Andra Jakstaite; painting, CE, after the motif in the photo)
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