Passover

Crooked sounds are coming down the darkness
Bruising homes of empty sounds and spaces.
Loud or little, in the air within, without,
Is noise. Will spirits sing tonight?
The silent cover heads and hearts to listen.

Watch and pray, we say as friends, forgetting
We are always crashing secret gardens.
Or, we sleep like sickened children, keeping
Hostile dreams that youth despair at seeing.

One by one, the noises sink, pervading
Lousy angry men and flustered women.
Youths in hiding in the streets or shabby
Shelters where they squander money falter
On the broken glass and shrillness hovering.
All these bodies flit confused, without a sigh.

The silent keep their faces clean, their
Hearts at rest for love's command: decrease.
Revealing cymbals, horns, and violins,
They wait no more: the sacred song begins.

***

This poem I wrote on August 9, 2002, two days before I left my home in North Babylon, N.Y., for Baltimore, where I lived for the next two years on my pilgrim journey.