Poetry

Years ago, we sang it in praises
at the parting of the sea,
beat our timbrels in ecstasies to shed our collars,
and believed we could dance all the way to Freedom.
 
We pursued a palpable promise,
watched it flare and recede
on each horizon, a haze by day,
a flame by night,
and we walked and walked and walked and walked.
 
But even the flutter of butterfly wings
is attached to a worm.
You can cross 100 seas,
wake before the birds to graze on manna sweet,
and even pass over the great Jordan itself.
At which point can you say you are truly free?
Throw off your slave's collar,
its shadow still chokes.
 
Walk. Walk. Walk my children. Walk.
Remember the promise.
Freedom. Freedom will be yours.
Soon. Soon.
 
"Do you promise?" they ask. "Do you promise?"
Walk. Walk. Walk my children. Walk.
Thousands upon thousands
walk, faster and faster,
on the basis of a promise made long ago,
a mother's lullaby by night,
a shepherd's lyre by day,
 
and I, an old man,
lie down in the shade of a rock
and watch, as a stampede of human rags
thunders past me,
too hungry to see
that even Freedom trails her shackles behind her.
 
The last cloud of dust disappears over the horizon.
The desert sky, so high, a distant, inscrutable blue

and the mountains skip like rams.