God’s Violin

By: Julia Vinograd

Poetry is a bridge between wounds.

— Julia Vinograd

Good and evil are only high and low 
on one string of god’s violin.
There are other strings being played 
stretching from our guts to the end of the world.
Telephone wires vibrate with what we meant to say,
explanations lost in black curved space
like socks lost under the bed.
Our silences wail under god’s fingers.
Our silences harmonize with 
the implacable pastel rise of a department store
and its peacock tail of blind mannequin eyes
while the triumphal march of a snail
to the other end of its glossy leaf
plays counterpoint.

I dreamed of god’s violin.
The number of strings went on beyond 
my eyes counting curve
and the length of the strings simply went on.
We miss so much.
Have you ever been driving alone at night 
down a freeway fighting sleep
and chasing the white line?
Supposed you realized
no matter how long and fast you drove
you’d be stuck in one white mark on the white line
and never get past it.
Like that.

The Music of the Spheres.
The Fiddler on the Roof.
The Piper on the Hills.
The heart-tug behind tv commercials
before they start selling glop.
We don’t hear god’s violin because we’re part of it
the way construction workers don’t hear their own drills.
But sometimes, just for one or two notes 
an echo sweeps us up like a tidal wave
scattering everything we clutch and fight for
out of our hands like spilled popcorn
and we stand in the ruins and laugh.
Afterwards we don’t remember.
Or we pretend we don’t remember,
putting everything wearily back the way it was 
and going on
and that also goes into the music.

God’s violin doesn’t help anything,
the world’s wounds are part of the music
and anyway, it’s too big.
Like smashing a symphony hall complete with symphony
on top of a spoonful of cough medicine
for a sick child.

Maybe we’re not supposed to listen.
Maybe it’s not possible to really listen
and still be any use to our lives.
Like trying to touch a toolkit
with burnt, aching fingers.
But I’ve heard the roar of that fire in the strings
and reached for it
and couldn’t reach high enough
and that was worse.
God’s violin is for us,
what we are for
god only knows.

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Of Spirit and Stone is a fresh collection of 28 Julia Vinograd poems. Steeped in metaphor and clever word play, these poems are balms for our brokenness. Lovingly selected from Vinograd's voluminous body of work by Ken Paul Rosenthal, who is making a feature documentary on her life and poetic legacy, this e-book is brimming with 22 archival photos of Julia and intimate close-ups of her typewriter's mechanical interior. Please give to the in-progress documentary about the woman who gave by ordering this unique holiday gift today.