The Cabinet Without Curiosity

under the Ottoman arches 

of Mohilever Street's mothballed 

museum of nature

the oracle of the past 

holds court to no audience

stiff-necked from so much looking back

she gazes at the padlocked entrance

imagining the sound

of ibex and hyrax, tortoise and turtledove

jailbreaks from a glassed-in diorama

pummelling the weighty door with rigour

as if they could find home again

in the changed surrounding hills

herbarium pages brittle with heat

and mossed with damp

release their specimens

the unlit air flitters with wingbeats

of cyclamen and bugloss, caper and anemone

rootless and free

to scramble and rewrite their names

she could tell of years of schoolgirls

long-sleeved and sombre 

herded through by wary teachers

for their annual inoculation

as if curiosity could be stilled

and dangerous questions etherized

by a dose of dusty science

if you asked she'd foretell

the ripples cast by a primordial fear 

that fed the rivers which watered the tree 

that gave forth the fruit of an enduring fiction

in a long-ago garden not far from here

but now to her delight

a different kind of garden thrives

behind the 19th-century museum

all who hunger

for fruit or for knowledge

may come and eat their fill

The Hebrew word "tzimtzum" means reduction or contraction. It is used in a variety of contexts, including mathematics and Kabbalistic thought. This poem is dedicated to my mother, who is struggling with dementia.