This is a short poem.
It comes from a thing I've read once about--
I guess it's a kind of folk tale about--
Rabbi Isaac is walking along one day,
and he sees Rabbi Jacob sitting down crying.
And he says, Rabbi Jacob, why do you cry?
And Rabbi Jacob said, because of all the splendid things that
die and go down into the earth.
And this is another way of seeing it.
It's called "Singing in My Difficult Mountains."
Helots are the slaves of the Spartans, who
were kept subjugated by the Spartans,
after they were conquered.
"Helot for what time there is in the baptist hegemony of death.
For what time there is summer, island, cornice.
Weeping and singing of what declines into the earth.
But of having, not of not having.
What abounds.
Amazed morning after morning by the yielding.
What things there are.
My fine house that love is."