One More Exodus
by Marc Mangel
One more exodus is finished. Perhaps thje 3001th customer
is the one who counts who gets the prize the grand
prize trip to peace and happiness and goodness and enough
food and no more war…no more…no…And the exodus is done.
The exodus is done. The tramping through sog and scratch
until the legs bleed because of these sharp reeds. The
burning sun and only tasteless, poisonned water to drink
and sometimes desert mind drives us to insantiy.
Cold nights
crying animals
wounded animals
scared animals
waiting lying to make us into a good breakfast. Hot days
so hot that death itself can be seen on the horizon waiting
to whisk us on the boiling air that rises from the ground.
Yet the exodus is over.
The exodus is over. Once more a law to be shattered as two
frail clay tablets against a golden calf. Once more a law
just and righteous yet ignored for fear of work. Once more
the law of Moses the Law of God yet the pig of man does not
obey and for forty years they roamed the desert. Yet
we have an exodus of only one week. And the exodus is consumed.
The exodus is consumed. And the exodus is consumed in a land
of green and wildflowers and blue and mountains that rise
firmly sharply and happily. And the land is a soft land
waiting. Or the land is a hard land also waiting waiting to
break waiting to injure waiting to wear us into the ground
into the earth to fertilize the nothingness that the land
doesn’t want to yield. Yes the land is ready. And the exodus
is finished.
Once more the exodus is finished.
April 1973