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