This piece, created for Fringes by Elliott batTzedek, is drawn from works by Genesis, Basho, Mary Oliver, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Emily Dickinson, Sara Teasdale, Susan Windle, Ben Johnson, Antonio Machado, Joan Larkin, Jane Hirschfield, Carl Sandburg, Sharon Olds, along with inspiration from Robert Bly and Alicia Ostriker.
This type of poem, woven from different sources, is called a “cento,” and it dates back to how much of Jewish liturgy was constructed, with lines from different psalms arranged around a common theme. Proud Philadelphian that I am, I think of this poem more as a “mosaic,” as I live in a city rich with the art of Isaiah Zagar. His mosaics gather the fractured, the broken, the odd, the collected, and the rescued to build entirely original work with meanings greater than the parts.
Below you’ll find the liturgy in two forms: first, the slides as we currently use them in services, decorated with images of bees native to the mid-Atlantic; second, the text annotated to show the source materials. If you’d like a version in Word, please reach out via the website.
To view the slides, click the first image and then scroll through.
On a June Morning, I Would Head for Your Scent
a mosaic with words from Genesis, Basho, Mary Oliver, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Emily Dickinson, Sara Teasdale, Susan Windle, Ben Johnson, Antonio Machado, Joan Larkin, Jane Hirschfield, Carl Sandburg, Sharon Olds, and inspiration from Robert Bly and Alicia Ostriker
built by Elliott batTzedek
On a June morning,
any June morning,
moving about in my garden
in a breezy time of day,[1]
I keep watch for You,
I follow silver slug lines,
sniffing for Your trail,
I call out “Where are You?”
And a bee
staggers out
of the peony.[2]
There is a dark hum among the roses,[3]
the murmuring of innumerable bees,[4]
and to the murmur of bees—
a witchcraft—
I yield[5]
to my desire for You.
If I were a bee and You
a flower,[6]
I would head for Your scent,[7]
oh my beloved,
I would land on Your petals
held wide apart, [8]
flinging myself wildly
onto the wetness
that sends me tumbling
to the bottom of Your cup.
There such sustenance,
You feeding me, because only I
can ripen all this fertile exuberance,
food for those not yet born.[9]
And would You let me go, coated with Your heaviness?[10]
Or would You close Your petals,
keep me fast,[11]
dissolving me slowly
into Your heart?
And if You were the bee,[12]
would You come to me,
fill Your small body
from this place, my source,
and moan in happiness?[13]
We are alike, You and I,
each created as the image of the other.[14]
We fly from blossom to sweet
impossible blossom,[15]
bartering pollen for nectar,
so we can make honey from the roses[16]
honey from the rosemary[17]
honey from the clover
honey from the peach blossoms
honey from the red and willing bee balm.\
But what honey would You make
from me?
What honey could I make of You?
Can we make honey from our failures?[18]
Honey from our bitterness,
honey from our loneliness,
honey from the bare fields[19]
of our hearts?
Can I make wild honey[20]
from what I have feared
to touch?
Can You make thick honey,
amber and shining,
from this good life?[21]
And who will eat this honey
of yearning and of the harvest
of ten thousand small flights?[22]
How this question gathers, rises,
swarms around me
with a hum both threat
and a lullaby,
and then departs,
unanswerable.[23]
On a June morning,
every June morning,
I pause to listen
for what I live to hear.
I watch the bees go honey-hunting
with yellow blur of wings,[24]
and, delirious with desire
dance directions to my heart.
I know that You will come;
it is Your duty
to find things to love
to bind Yourself to this world.[25]
[1] Genesis 3:8-9, Etz Hayim
They heard the sound of the Lord God moving about in the garden at the breezy time of day; and the man and his wife hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. The Lord God called out to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”
[2] Basho
A bee
staggers out
of the peony.
[3] “What is this dark hum among the roses?” Mary Oliver, “Hum”
[4] “and murmuring of innumerable bees” Tennyson
[5] “The Murmur of a Bee/A Witchcraft—yieldeth me—“ Emily Dickinson, “155”
[6] Sara Teasdale, “The Rose and the Bee,” used here and referenced in following stanza
If I were a bee and you were a rose,
Would you let me in when the gray wind blows?
Would you hold your petals wide apart,
Would you let me in to find your heart,
If you were a rose?
“If I were a rose and you were a bee,
You should never go when you came to me,
I should hold my love on my heart at last,
I should close my leaves and keep you fast,
If you were a bee.”
[7] Susan Windle, “Pollinator”
heading for the scent
of what i love
i land
on a wetness
that sends me
tumbling
to the bottom
of your cup
[8] Teasdale, see above
[9] Marge Piercy, “Amidah”
and for those not yet born
for whom we build our houses
[10] Windle, “Pollinator”
i am coated
in the fragrance of such love
i go
with good news
on my back
[11] Teasdale
[12] Teasdale
[13] Oliver, “Hum”
They’re small creatures and they are
filling their bodies with sweetness, how could they not
moan in happiness?
[14] inspired by Alicia Ostriker’s Volcano Sequence. In “2. during the bombing of Kosovo” the poet’s voice states “so perhaps you want us to understand /it throbs also in you/like leavening[…] because we are your image,” adding in “3. questions and answers,” “God, do you/feel it too.” Then God’s voice answers, “have you not guessed/your desire is mine your pain is mine […] the infected wound of your love inflames me […] what is worse than the contemptuous glance/of one to whom you have given your soul.”
[15] Li-Young Lee, “Blossoms”
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
[16] Inspired by Ben Johnson, “but to draw forth out of the best and choicest flowers, with the Bee, and turne all into honey”
[17] “the honey from the rosemary” Antonio Machado “Proverbs and Songs: XVIII” translated by Alan Trueblood
[18] Machado, “15” in “Songs”, from a very loose translation by Robert Bly
Last night I dreamed – blessed illusion-
that I had a beehive here
in my heart
and that the golden bees were making
white combs and sweet honey
from my old failures
[19] “and the honey of the bare fields” Machado “Proverbs and Songs: XVIII” translated by Alan Trueblood
[20] Joan Larkin, “Song” in My Body: New and Selected Poems
You crashing the keys with
huge paws, pulling wild honey
from a broken hive.
Roaring your song at me
so you don’t have to sing alone.
[21] Jane Hirschfield, “Bees”
Or did you think it the sound
of distant bees,
making only thick honey of this good life?
[22] inspired by Robert Bly, “Driving West in 1970”
and we were eating the honey
Of distance and the word “there”
[23] Hirschfield, “A Hand”
Unanswerable, humming like bees, it rises, swarms, departs
[24] Carl Sandburg, “In the Tall Grass”
Let the bees go honey-hunting
with yellow blur of wings
[25] Sharon Olds, “Little Things” in The Gold Cell
as if it were our duty to
find things to love, to bind ourselves to this world