Lambada by Galilee Poem by Anne Lee Tzu Pheng

i.

They are doing the lambada
by the Sea of Galilee,
the singing and the noise
blasting up the promenade
to the Quiet Beach Hotel,
where I am trying to understand
this great event, of being here,
where paralytic, demoniac and blind
found peace at the quiet word
of a wandering miracle-man.

Far from paralysed these revellers,
though demoniac may well describe the scene;
the women barely visible from my room
but visibly bare, are treading invisible water,
their drowning gestures more than a sign
of the unfinished work of the Nazarene.
The band is celebrating a new Tiberian glory,
beating up a frenzy of maudlin worship
of love, of peace, shaloms of nostalgic agony,
and a new Horeduas bawls her strange love protect:
"Y're drivin' me crazy!"

And indeed she is driving me crazy,
and those of us who thought
to find quiet in the land of Galilee.



ii.

I feel unredeemed tonight,
confused by this unGalilean turmoil,
the mind horridly agape (not agape)
at the undeniable lure of these sensual songs.
I do not know if this silly sympathy
is thwarted expectation asking more,
or simply the reluctant recognition
that these lambada lovers,
so much more present to the present,
would have been warmly welcome
at that love-feast, and
the host himself seen us as pharisaical.