Poetry class #3

Yom Hu'ledet Sameach[i]

With haunted eyes

Peering out across the hills,

He asks me,                       

                      or no one,

“I wonder…what do you think became of them?”

I think of them;

I wonder

      --  as I often do --

As I lay the plates

On the table that they left

In payment for their stay.

I think of them

in this bleak, grey season since the slaughter,

grey with sackcloth,

grey with ash.

That night

As if with a rock from a spinning sling

We were hit with the squalid smell

Of unwashed shepherds.

It was then,

Then, as we went down to clear

The raucous, rude, mess of men away,

That he told me of them.

“Ah Eli!  And where was your head?

You didn’t put the camel drivers in the stable?

Her with child, Eli? With child!!?”

And then

A cry that split the night;

And silence fell,

And shepherds fell upon their knees,

And tears fell in muddy streams

Down leathered faces. 

We cleaned a room,

And cleared the way,

And as we gently led them in,

I heard the shepherds’ unhushed voices

Whispering of music

And of angels.

I wonder. 

---

[i] Happy Birthday