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.

In the pale, faint, morning light,
Dawn, with fingers lily white,
in stillness waits for Phoebus bright
to set her all aglow.

And when the sun has risen high,
serenely shines the peaceful sky,
content to watch the hours fly
'til bright beams overflow.

In blaze of glory slips the sun
below the earth when day is done;
in darkness, hid from everyone,
the silent dawn will grow.

These fine, strong sons of mine, it is not right
that they should be required to wait, confined
to savage lawlessness, their growing might
left flailing and unharnessed by the mind,
'til softened by disuse and disarray,
we give their ruined manhood full free reign,
invested safe 'til ripened past decay,
long storing up vast dividends of pain.
But I will call them upward in their youth,
delighting in their full fresh strength and speed.
While still they're young, I'll lead them into truth;
so youth and age supply each other's need.
Toward self nor them, it is no charity
to deny dear sons good labor's dignity.

The bell, that once rang out so loud and clear,
is cracked and silent; still we gather 'round,
for thund'rous is the hush we've come to hear
and wakens echoes that do still resound,
if only in our hearts, of liberty.

I lay me down to sleep tonight, and deep
regret and mourning fill my weary soul
with longing for the watch I cannot keep;
I taste the merest part of my life's whole.

Oblivion's brink looms near; I pause in fear.
It matters not if be a blank abyss,
or if be dreams whose course I cannot steer;
Each night, though dim, reflects death's somber kiss.

Yet sleep I must, if in the morn I'd rise,
and wide awake, with newly opened eyes,
would watch the rosy dawn spread o'er the skies.
My heart awaits the answer to it's cries

when wakened by the trumpet and made whole,
I'll rise as light of morning fills my soul.

The precious death wells up from depths below,
the sunshine of a thousand summers bright,
distilled in fluid blackness, and the glow
is from these deeps that guides my pen tonight.

For starlight leaves in darkness what is near;
the dancing worlds across the milky way
illuminate the season and the year,
but theirs is not the nearer light of day.

And so in darkest deeps we seek the sun,
to kindle freshly whensoe'er we choose.
Though stars their unchanged courses ever run,
we now select what rhythms we may use.

But this the price our our eternal day;
The further light of stars has gone away.

The golden death, it shimmers on the sea;
Too brilliant, radiant rainbows seal the vow
That not by water, but by fire, will be
The final end, as hell leaks even now.

And even now, the long forgotten dead
Are rising, soulless and unstoppable.
Their masters have gained powers great and dread,
But now they taste those wrathful pow'rs in full.

The fires of hell they've loosed upon the earth;
Their bodies and their tools now feed the flames,
With nothing left to stop this strange rebirth,
For things there are on earth that no man tames.

And so it was, when wisdom's fruit we ate,
We grew in skill too soon, and truth too late.