In the dust of forbidden pages,
Where candlelight flickers on trembling script,
Old myths murmur warnings through the silence
Of centuries shrouded in trembling breath.
We conjure guardians from the mud and flame,
Hands smeared with faith and trembling with need –
Yet every shape summoned from darkness and word
Carries the echo: beware what you create.
Jewish legends wake beneath cautious hands:
The Golem – risen, colossal, mute –
A figure of clay built to shield the fragile,
Born from desperation, commanded by names.
It stands between violence and its makers,
But its strength is deaf to mercy’s plea;
Intent can fray beneath the weight of power,
And makers find monsters in gifts misread.
By mystic rites and letters etched in fire,
It stirs to life, fulfilling deep desire –
But the dream that shapes becomes the dream that binds,
And purpose, clear at first, soon clouds our minds.
The Golem grows when faith and terror merge;
Its granite fist both comfort and a scourge,
For mercy, once created out of dread,
May turn unthinking when a single word is said.
Yet words must carve with precision’s keen blade,
For literal hearts no subtlety can shade;
A letter changed, an utterance unmeant –
A trusted servant twisted, violence bent.
Stone lips may parrot justice, never know
The brittle boundary that splits friend from foe;
What we awaken with our trembling tongue
May haunt the world when prayers go unsung.
In cold moonlight, the Dybbuk softly slides
Where grief is raw and every secret hides.
A wraith that finds the fissures in the soul,
It fills the hollow with voices, dark and whole.
Beware the grief you nourish, lest it speak:
The past you summon may consume the weak.
In longing’s echo, shadows lean and glide,
And healing’s search becomes a haunted guide.
Leviathan stirs in fathoms out of sight –
A coil of hunger, waiting for the light.
Behemoth braids its sinews through the land –
A force that wakes whenever dreams expand.
And Ziz, with wings more vast than hope or fear,
Explodes from clouds when reckonings draw near.
For every beast you name with sacred breath
You conjure endings – life entwined with death.
These titans rest beneath the world’s thin skin,
Each one a caution, pulsing out and in;
Creation’s power, trusted and betrayed,
Reminds each heart: beware what you have made.
What shields today may shatter at a glance,
And what consoles, tomorrow’s circumstance.
The hand that sculpts a saviour, longing-blind,
May birth the peril it had hoped to bind.
So let us wonder as we write and pray:
Be wary of the names you speak today.
To shape the world is also to be shaped –
By myth, by longing, by the traps we’ve draped.
Each Golem built, each beast beneath the skin,
Reminds the wary watcher, deep within:
Creation’s emblem is a doubled edge –
The wish for safety balanced on a ledge.
by Bakchos
