Rejoicing

God washed his womb in the ocean.
All things that lived in or above the sea
rejoiced that they were there.
The sand under the rocks,
the driftwood trees rejoiced.
The living, those who called to their kind,
the lucky ones, rejoiced.

When I was young and prodigal,
I dived into God’s womb and the ocean.
God spoke to me as I swam
through a thousand reflections,
his face and my face touched
like Mary’s cheek on the cheek of her deposed son.
God washed across my face. My face was in him.
From time to time I spat him out as I swam.

I came out of his womb dripping. I felt clean.
I knew God was cold and wet wilderness.
Shivering, I dried God off me with a towel
then I hung him on a clothesline to dry.
God and the towel seemed happy and laughing,
flapping in the wind without commandments.
From the shore I could see the horizon:
he was washing his womb in the ocean
after a day of love, before his gala night.

Rejoicing is a magnificent, celebratory gathering of Stanley Moss’s poetry from six decades. He is one of America’s finest poets and this collection demonstrates why. Marilyn Hacker wrote of his work, ‘Its verbal generosity and bravura, its humanity, the quality and quantity of information which it integrates into poetry of the highest order make it a continuing delight’, and in Britain John Fuller wrote: ‘Stanley Moss’s poems are fresh and unpredictable, full of colour and wisdom. As a poetry that engages the philosophical mind it seems characteristically American in its scope and cultural engagement, but there is also the generous warmth of a mind at ease in its body, open to surprises and possibilities.’