I am a shining star,

shining over the valley where David slew Goliath.

I see the blood upon the stones,

I see the color of my bones where the birds have picked them dry,

Where the sun has shone like a rainbow from heaven.

I am waiting now on the loincloth of Goliath.

I am a jewel on his belt.

I am a vulture scavenged by crows,

I am the body of the giant felled upon the ocean shore.

 

I will be the salt on my grandfather’s foreskin,

tasting the earth through the lips of the sea.

I will become a gull, feasting on herring,

churning on stormy seas.

I will be a ship on a wave,

Breaking on the shore.

I will not be afraid.

I will be a tender spot on the heart of a calf,

on the tail of a bear rooting through the woods.

 

I have been a book originally.

I have held the body of a Hebrew son in my arms,

and I have embraced him as one of my own.

We did not mean to be fighting.

We were on the same side.

I have been a giant of the first degree and upon my breast a silver star gleamed.

And when the last sons of David have sounded the alarm,

the biplanes of the enemy will drop their loads

and retrieve new eyes from the bottom of the cleansing sea.

 

I have been a book originally.

I want to know how this ends.

 

-Written as an exercise in a class I taught last February. Italicized lines are from the Cad Goddeu.