Phillip Medhurst
A Pilgrimage to Truth
Category: Judaism
Mar 23, 2016
Passover
We pass over unknown lands
Eastward bound.
We see nothing.
Tunnels echo the rattle.
The wherefore fades
Of our herding to
This trembling wagon,
Rubbing shoulders
Bolt upright.
I still hope, regardless,
For a little red house,
A little white house,
Music playing
In snow-showers, fine as ash.
For then we shall be free –
Work shall make us so –
From fear incontinent.
But only a chimney I see.
Where is the pillar of cloud?
Where is the column of fire?
Will the cyclone be
The fiat “not-to-be”
From the powers that be
As I scramble, naked, up
A mound of sacrifice,
My nails scoring a riddle
On those blank walls?
Mar 11, 2016
Jonah
In the fish’s belly, I,
Crowned with slimy weed,
Feel odds and ends of recollects
Slide past, a monster’s brunch;
But no repast for me,
The bearer of bad luck.
Staring, dreading nought,
Disembodied eyes
And scales and teeth and bones
Swirl round and on and down
Through retribution’s maw,
To God knows what.
The storm outside abates.
His anger; is it spent? –
Repentance rolls perhaps from port
Unto metropolis.
The giant tail, now purposeful,
Flicks the new-stilled waves.
The sway of swerve round roots
Of mountains, through drowned valleys
Stops. Now patient, I await
A resurrecting belch,
Hoping that those Ninevites
Get just what they deserve.
Feb 9, 2016
The Sacrifice
A sacrifice like Abel’s is required:
No shrieking root torn up,
Or apple plucked and dashed,
But some born thing, with sentience,
Whose face, bewildered by the knife
Will stare as life flows out.
That way our God is satisfied,
Reclaiming what he once bestowed,
Maybe, heartless, envying
This creature-kind who lived
And loved the crimson blood too much –
As though it were its own.
Feb 9, 2016
The Scapegoat
Phillip Medhurst 