Pesach – Passage, No. 2
This is the bread of affliction that our fathers ate in the land of Egypt. All who are hungry, come and eat! All in need, come and join in celebrating Pesach!
This year we are here, next year we will be in the land of Israel!
This year we are slaves, next year we will be free men!
– Haggadah, Gerald Garouste, Marc-Alain Ouaknin
The night we celebrated Pesach –
what did he say, what did he mean
“leaving”
and that we knew the way to where he was going?
I was trying to work it
out when another sea split open
not waters humping up like steel cliffs
but a great scythe slashing
through the middle of everything
and him falling, tumbling down into the rift
a passage
where there had been none before
death leering from either side.
I heard the soldiers coming,
swords clanking, down the path.
My lungs burned in the acrid air
eyes stung to see flames
draped from clouds in smoky sheets.
And while they dragged him off
blood blossomed
over the vast lintel and door posts
of the writhing world
and ran down quietly
like tears.
This is a slightly altered poem from an earlier series of lenten poems I wrote called, Love in Small Doses. Pesach, or Pasach, also spelled Pascha is Hebrew for Passover or passage. The verbal form means to protect and to have compassion as well as pass over. Exodus 12 -14; John 14-19
