Confer

Maimonides Hafez Rumi Yehudah HaLevi
Leonard Cohen and
James Baldwin Confer (Ten Parts)


All of them working
The repairs

From over the
Divide

They chose me to
Transcribe

I choose you to
Imbibe

On the subject of what
Constitutes

Whole
W-h-o-l-e


Part 2

Maimonides taught
Keep it pure

When truth arises
Minimize surprises

Disorganization
Confusion distraction tenses

Build around the truth
With fences

Buttress guidelines and
Protection

Above all
Or-gan-i-za-tion

Take what you know and
Categorize

This is what I did
12th century

This will help
Even if it will not stand

You will be remembered for having
Planned

Part 3

Well educated I am
Yehudah ben Shmuel HaLevi

Poet physician
End of 11th century to beginning

Of 12th century I wrote almost 800
Poems

The most famous I call
The Khazari book

Born in Tudela then under Muslim rule
I am drawn to the Sepharad feel of the south

To the music and the verse forms
Of the Mizrach the East

I sought a teacher Moshe ibn
[son of] Ezra

I never lost my yearning
Libi b’mizrach

My heart is in the East
I left for Jerusalem the blessed

And somewhere near the holy city
I died

V'anochi b'sof ma'arav
At the edge of the West


Part 4

Hafez Persian
I am named for memorization

Fourteenth century
I knew Koran by heart listening

To my father’s
Recitation

I knew all of Rumi
In love with a beautiful

Unattainable woman
I drew a circle around myself

Forty days and forty
Nights vigil

What was out of reach
Physical

I would attain
Spiritual

Part 5

I am Rumi
Balkhi

Mevlana/Mawlana
I am called our master

13th century
Settling into life at the

Madrassah until I met
Shams


Shams disappeared
Where should I seek?

I am the same as he
His essence speaks through me

I have been looking for
Myself


Part 6

I have looked for guidance in
Wine

We might have seen that
God was there

I Rumi
Have given over a single

Poem in the last years
Of my life

Roots of the roots of the
Roots

There is I and there is
You

But not room for
Two

In one house
Knock knock

Who’s there
You

Part 7

You may come in since
You have cooked away

Your I
You are not a drop

In the Ocean
You are an ocean

In a drop
The universe in

Ecstatic
Motion

You will keep breaking your
Heart

Until it
Opens


Part 8

There is a crack in
Everything

That how the light
Gets in

I wrote it Leonard the Cohen
I died in 2016

Well quoted and often
Misunder-

Stood wholeness may not
Be all

We cracked it up
To be


Part 9

James Baldwin I am dying
In 1987

Wholeness not
Our aspiration

Everything
Splintered

What we do to fill
The cracks

With gold tincture
Beauty

Be bold
You may even

Give up the language of
Whole

Part 10

Some of us make
Repairs

Some of us visioning
Beauty There

From our flaws
We build a menorah

In the
Air

Above our heads
A vision

This light might
Illumine everywhere

What one person praises
Another person

Curses we have fashioned a
Menorah

Out of flaws
And Verses

Now we begin
Its repair