“Yoma,” Geoffrey Hartman’s last poem.

https://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/the-scholar-as-poet-remembering-geoffrey-hartman-1929-2016

“Yoma”

Rain in the autumn, rain in the spring

let it rain poetry, dear God,

midrashic parables, rabbinic clichés,

or, better still, the comfort of Psalms.

I know those traps, those enemies, Lord,

help me in my old age, my distress:

this day I stand contrite before you,

eyes, broken images, ears,

dimmed by unceasing sighs.

Where is your comfort to be found?

No longer in the lai-lai-lai of prayersong.

In all your holy mountain what survives

not stained by cries for blood? Where now

the numinous Jordan, the pure Helicon?

Encompassed by my own inanities

I stumble and fade, searching… searching…

Ah, woe betide! the nymphs of memory

draw me under, into a bitter wave

that whelms and does not cleanse.

I am poured out, unrhymed, unrhythmed.