The Nebuchadnezzar magazine

. Ekphrasis Poem — Final Revision

(From Light Radiates from the Temple Menorah by Yoram Raanan)

Fresco of a New Menorah

By Eric-Anderson Momou

On the bathroom wall

The spectral light shifts

Developing like the sight 

Of a million stars.

There are no painters

Or brushes here 

Only broad, strokes,

Beginning upon the white wall

Here: a rapid dappling of blue

Smeared to dune

Attesting to that background. 

There: a wanton squiggle of lavender,

Crimson: Prose of passion, 

Burning a grandiose hall

That spreads to scarlet shoals.

Where silver blades slice their wings

As spirits climb

Up in that sky, as avian portents

And there, rests

A golden stalk

At the temple’s base.

Growing up, it climbs to smoke

And truncates,

Tapers to,

Reach 

Twilight skies:

Offspring of Yggdrasil.

Flighted flowering branches.

Bearing up, 

The tongues of flame. 

The candle wicks

So ends the painting,

That again will blume,

To golden plume.