Passover

On this night
             I remember Nachshon
             who was not Moses who
                         walked into the Red Sea
        ...

Send your spirit
     to revive our corpses,
and ripple the longed-for
     land again.
 
The crops come from you;
     you’re good to all—
and always return
     to restore what has been.

The courage to let go of the door, the handle.
The courage to shed the familiar walls whose very
stains and leaks are comfortable as the little moles
of the upper arm; stains that recall a feast,
a child’s naughtiness, a loud blattering storm
that...

In life you had a temper.
Your sarcasm was a whetted knife.
Sometimes you shuddered with fear
but you made yourself act no matter
how few stood with you.
Open the door for Eliyahu
that he may come in.

Now you return to us
in rough times, out...

The songs we join in
are beeswax candles
burning with no smoke
a clean fire licking at the evening
 
our voices small flames quivering.
The songs string us like beads
on the hour. The ritual is
its own melody that leads us

where we have gone before
and hope...

Prosaic miles of streets stretch all round,
    Astir with restless, hurried life and spanned
By arches that with thund’rous trains resound,
    And throbbing wires that galvanize the land;
    Gin-palaces in tawdry splendor stand;
The newsboys shriek of mangled bodies found;
    The...

How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves,
      Close by the street of this fair seaport town,
Silent beside the never-silent waves,
      At rest in all this moving up and down!

The trees are white with dust, that...

Here, where the noises of the busy town,
   The ocean's plunge and roar can enter not,
We stand and gaze around with tearful awe,
   And muse upon the consecrated spot.

No signs of life are here: the very prayers
   Inscribed around are in a language...