shamati 99 a poem

 

Born a fool, with no flame in the night,

No hunger for wisdom, no yearning for Light—

The drop is decreed, “weakling, fool,” so it seems,

Condemned to the dust, to a life without dreams.

Yet the Creator, in mercy, He scattered the seeds,

Planted the righteous to answer our needs.

For alone we are ashes, corpses that rot,

But beside the great ones, new powers are caught.

The fool has no vessel, no craving, no fight,

But he cleaves to the righteous—receives their delight.

What I lack from my birth, I inherit through them,

As a beggar made king in Jerusalem.

Without them, my Torah is poison, a knife,

But with them it blossoms and gives me true life.

So wicked or righteous is not in the bone,

It’s chosen in love, it’s chosen in home.

So I fall on my face, in weakness I cry,

“Friends, lift me upward, don’t let me die!”

And the Creator replies with a whisper above:

“You are righteous through them… through faith, through love.”