The Good Words Don't Burn

A Cold Lithuanian Anthem Avigayil Rosensweig Mixed metaphors, like mixed drinks, are something I am unfamiliar with, because I abhor metaphor, and drunkenness: Ingest, instead, the provincial prosaic prosody of my writing, intoxicated with my own sobriety. For precepts are better than fine wines, as are cheap wines, sugar saturated and savored by the tongue. Therefore, let legal texts drip from my mouth like honey. For I say religion is like metrical poetry, and dwell, like the Divine, within the cubits of the law. If the sweetness of honey be an acquired taste, I have long since acquired it.

Hill Country Avigayil Rosensweig They settled in the hill country Looking down on the foothills— The flatlands, they called them Where water fell from the sky The land exported wine— And other things, like gods and alphabets Crafting walls of mudbrick Each June, when the sun was hot and dry And no crops ripened A good time for household tasks—and war They lived in the hill country Built their temple—twice In a city on the edge of the desert Thrice yearly paid their devotions To a God they dared to say was everyone’s They were driven from the hill country Paid their devotions, still, with naught but Minds and lips and bits of parchment Claiming all lands their own—and none Born in the desert, they said But their eyes were full of sadness—and memories of hills —My brother lives in the hill country