Repentance

It's passover, and now the time has come
when holiness is mostly a clean house.
When all the outward forms of thought and word
demand the inwardness of purity--

the little infestations all must go.

It's only eighteen minutes, so they say,
that matzo dough stays kosher, but I know
it's less that that, because I've seen the way
that dough begins to sour when fresh ground grain
first touches water, even then the bubble rise,

spreading like the words of egypt's wise,
obscuring pure simplicity, the cries
of Rachel's children--lost.

So the exodus must come around again.