How Best Can We Remember We Were Slaves

April 19, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is faith and Jewish identity, in honor of Passover, which begins on the evening of April 23.

Today’s poem is a Passover poem about the need for liberation from slavery in the present as well as in the past.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

How best can we remember we were slaves?
After all, it's been three thousand years.
Perhaps in time the ceremony paves
Pleasingly the terrace of our tears.
Yet it happened once, this morning myth,
Past the open window of the wound,
And again, and yet again, the truth
Still streaming from the altars of the doomed.
So must we be the slaves of our own time,
Our holocaust the holocaust of all,
Victorious only when the ancient crime
Exists alone as ritual and rhyme,
Remnants of a myth beyond recall.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/howbes.html. For more Passover poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/passoverpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Faith and Jewish identity.
April 18: Praised Be Those Who Don’t Believe the Tale
April 19: How Best Can We Remember We WereSlaves