The Sound of the Moon on the Ninth of Av
(originally published August 11, 2024)
Reading time: About two minutes
Ravens remember every face
of the Persians who burned it, leaving
a Wall facing West, for eternity.
Then, the forced March east, under the crepuscular light, and the decades in Babylon,
in the gardens.
At the end of Daniel’s Book:
No owl blinked when the Lord said: “Koresh Ro’i,” Xerxes, be my Shepherd.
It was not a full moon that ended the exile. Nor was it Daniel’s dream sight.
It was the knowledge, no;
Know this: it was the certainty of the owls in flight, under a silver sliver in awe of its children;
The shepherd’s son’s fear was heard loudest under the pistachio trees in Kerman,
under a cloudy waning crescent moon, the silent parliament’s flight,
toward their ancient respite always remembered,
led by kingfishers,
our guardians of rivers and mountains, always paired.
The owls’ search for the gardens of Babylon remembered, too, in grief,
on this Ninth’s visit to Xerxes after Mars’ rise in the East, and fall in the South,
in the minutes before sunrise.
Then, home without recanting.
Under the grieving stars, held hostage by their love for
memories of a lost Persian shepherd and the jasmine-filled breeze off the two rivers.
“I am here,” says the Voice;
“We are here,” they respond, as one.
“Go in good health,” the moon replies,
breaking her silence with a tear dripping from a single eye, the other one dry.
Bells rang on a hill that remembered everything when the parliament circled back
seeking their nests;
leaving behind once halcyon pistachio fields aflame, and
the kingfishers in high branches watching and waiting.
“We are here,” they say, as one.
“Go in good health,” the moon replies again,
breaking her silence.
Bells ringing on a Hill
filled with ravens who, remembering everything, say:
“Never doubt an owl.”
Credit: New York Times, 2024
Musical Coda:
Philippe du Col © 2024