A Cup of Trembling
By Kwame Dawes
Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem.
—Zechariah 12:2
Is a lucky ting I never get swell-headed ...
I will never run away.
—Burning Spear, “Swell Headed”
the wounds of a walk foot man iii
In the corner, a woman enthroned, dips a cup
into an earthen pot, lifts it, and pours it repeating
the ritual again and again as if water must move,
holy water must move light and the soft music
of the breaking and unbreaking of the surface
of things. A single white votive candle is the witness.
A massive dove hovers on the wall. Spin and dip
my people. Spin and dip my people for what is holy
will be holy again. But how is it that the terror
arrived unannounced on an ordinary sunny day
bland as all mornings. We wake and perform
our rituals of survival. The radio announcer,
with a touch of alarm as much as a Midwestern
normative broadcaster speech allows, asks
why have we not been tested for the accusatory
finger of the genes we pass on without weighing
the value of the thing. After all, we found it
tucked beneath a mountain of offal, just steaming
there, waiting. And in the silence we rehearse the truth
of it, that everything now arrives with full-blown chaos
but with all rhyme and reason—we are after all
the ungrateful survivors—Aba gone, the cancer
did that and uncles and aunts and cousins
and the march of the people we know and suddenly
do not know. We lie side by side on our backs,
eyes closed on the wavelets of the bed sheets,
silently, before the shower and the buzzing brush
engine, the soft rituals. At noon, comes the haunting
note: “I’m feeling very low today. I cried.”
The beginning of sorrow is the beginning of knowing,
and the beginning of knowing is ancient, repeats
itself as rituals do. “You cannot have that, it is not
yours.” “That is not fair.” “What is not fair?” “I want that.”
“But it is not yours and you can’t have it.” “That’s not fair.”
“What’s not fair?” “That.” “What?” “You are not fair.”
“Why?” “Because I want that and you won’t let me
have it. That’s not fair. You are not fair.” “The world
is not fair. You will learn that.” “But, sometimes
the world is fair.” “Is it?” “Sometimes.” And there
is the end of ignorance and a certain beauty—not
the fairness in the world, but the contemplation
of it—it is not good, it is not nice, it is hard, it, it, it ....
In this the world is contemplated outside of the self,
and this is why we think of God. I have carried
this story with me for years. A story framed on
long walks through the city. Nothing in it has meaning,
except the way it ends all meaning. And the cup
overflows, the cup of trembling is poured, and it flows
over with the promise of holiness—not so much
purity, but the art of being set aside. A boy, walking
alone along the streets of his city, fantasizes about
the relief of isolation, the body and mind set apart
to build objects of beauty, to capture the whispering
of duppies in the trees, to be free of all guilt and regret,
for the body alone finding its own pleasure cannot sin,
for sin is in the contemplation of the wounding of others,
and alone, the voice of anointing shivers ripples in the cup.
