(of David, lyric, when he was in the wilderness of Judah)

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The value of translating nefesh not by the anachronistic “soul” but by its literal sense of “neck” or “throat” becomes perfectly clear in Psalm 63, where “my throat” is paired with “my body” (1), “my mouth” (5), and “your right hand” (8). The word shows up a fourth time as that part of the speaker that has been hunted by the villains, “those who to waste it | seek my throat” (9). Even God’s name only appears three times.

Pronouns for “me” and for “you,” however, are even more prominent. I count eleven first-person-singular suffixes for nouns: my God, my throat, my body (1); my lips (3); my life, my hands (4); my throat, my mouth (5); my bed (6); my throat (8), my throat (9). I count twelve second-person-singular suffixes for nouns and verbs (“behind you” in verse 8 functions as a preposition and a a noun): I greet the dawn for you (1); I have looked to you, your power, your glow (2); your care, venerate you (3);  I kneel to you, your name (4); I have remembered you (6); your wings (7); behind you, your right hand (8). In addition, there are prepositional suffixes: “for me” or li (7) and “held me up” is literally “for me supported your right hand,” started by the word bi (8); the two “for you” clauses (lekha) in the middle of verse 1, and the “of you” ending (bakh) of verse 6. The first verse of the psalm includes the standalone preposition “you” (’attah). That totals thirteen first-person suffixes, “me” or “my,” and sixteen explicit second-person markers, “you” or “your,” all but one of these concentrated in just the first eight verses.

All of this is to say that the first eight verses of the poem are remarkably intimate. They linger in the depths of the speaker’s throat, which thirsts and fills and murmurs and hews to “you.” These verses starts at dawn and wake in the night. They name two bodies the way lovers do, the way a Yehuda Amichai poem does: “my lips,” “my hands,” my mouth,” “your glow,” “your wings,” “your right hand.”          

It’s those last verses, verse 9 through 11, though, that change the poem’s experience entirely. They fit the first eight verses by the images of “throat” and “mouth” which bracket them (9a, 11c), but not by much else. There’s no first or second person after “my throat” in 9a. You and I disappear. Instead, the psalm becomes desire for punishment for bad guys we didn’t even know were there, desire for the king’s joy, and a general statement about the importance of telling the truth. The punishments are vivid and memorable, but they pose a problem. So much of the poem is about a relationship of care, which takes place intimately, in and between the speaker’s body and God’s. That’s why the throat matters, our readiest way to open to food and drink and air. And yet the only body parts here at the end are the slammed jaws of liars and the guts of people the speaker fears, poured over the pommel of a sword, devoured by foxes.