Classic Poem

— A Rabbi . When I was a boy, sent a captive to Rome,
the ship was dashed, stern foremost, upon a rock,
and other rocks, smooth with weeds, across which the waves were sliding,
stretched beyond, as far as we could see;
when I heard the crash
and saw the steep deck sloping
to the dark water, into which Romans and slaves were spilled,
their hands and feet
finding no hold or step,
and no cry from all those mouths
sound
in the howling wind,
yet there was no such terror in my heart
as now.
— Another Rabbi . In the Galilean hills,
a troop of Romans and Idumeans hunting us,
I hid in a cave
that led I knew not where, but knew it safe,
for the mouth was low,
in a thicket and covered well with vines,
known only to our band and the serpents;
and there was an earthquake —
so slight a shock that, seated as I was,
it rocked me gently,
but enough to start
the ledge
under which we crept
crashing,
and I in the dusty blackness
bruising my hands against the rock
where the twilight of the opening
had been shining.
To stay there was to die;
through vents
I could not stand in,
too low
for walking
and at last
for crawling,
vaults so large,
I hardly heard the
waterfall,
upon a shore
without wave or ripple,
leaning away from
chasms —
cliff below cliff,
down which the falling
stone would strike and
fall, strike
ever fainter,
until it fell in silence,
my hands, antennae,
around stalagmites and rocks, through dung
of bats, touching
cold rock, cold flesh of shuddering
things, bats flying
against my face, squeezing
their mouselike faces
between my lips —
now
to stay here is to die.
— Johanan . Times like these
may strengthen us, as water becomes steam
and climbs to the clouds, or ice
and for a time iron;
our anger at the legions
that camp about Jerusalem,
sure of their eagles that have flown
at a thousand victories,
until the world is become only the suburbs
of their city
and the idols
sergeants of their emperor;
the stench from our heaps of slain
in the fields about the city
and from those that lie
singly in the gutters,
dead of hunger or the plague or a stray arrow,
heat our bodies
to swiftness
and strength muscles never had,
freeze our breasts
hard as breastplates,
and our hands
as their blades;
and yet,
as our quarreling captains know,
and those schismatics who stab each other —
Jerusalem will fall,
this month or next,
this year or this decade,
and Vespasian or his son
and the meanest follower
walk, smiling at the bronze signs
that forbid the foreigner, into the temple,
looking about in the
empty gloom for the
God who has escaped them,
even into the holy of holies,
where only the high priest goes
only on the holiest day.
Here we are
like a pool that the rains have left
in a hollow of the street,
drying slowly in the shade,
and every day it lasts, it stinks the more.
— Another Rabbi . Saul, never doubting Samuel,
knew that he would die on Mount Gilboa
in the morning,
he and Jonathan,
yet they went into battle;
and we, knowing Jerusalem is lost,
our temple to be open not only to Romans and Idumeans,
Greeks and Syrians, but the dogs of the street
will run about its stones,
the birds of the ditches nest there,
and the glory of Judah
darken as a stream darkens at twilight,
may well do no less than Saul and Jonathan.
— Johanan . You have seen a bush beside the road
whose leaves the passing beasts pluck at
and whose twigs are sometimes broken
by a wheel, and yet it flourishes,
because the roots are sound —
such a heavy wheel is Rome;
these Romans,
all the legions of the East
from Egypt and Syria,
the islands of the sea and the rivers of Parthia,
gathered here
to trample down Jerusalem,
when they have become a legend
and Rome a fable,
that old men will tell of in the city's gate,
the tellers will be Jews and their speech Hebrew.
The hurricane, leaving its dead or dying,
leaves also the healing and the hale,
but the sunshine and the stars,
the air we breathe,
the daily bread,
the words we listen to,
and the thoughts of our hearts
become ourselves and our sons.
We who have outlived the empires
of the ancients — Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon,
withstood their conquests or been conquered
and, captives or fugitives, slaves or strangers,
still were Jews,
have nothing to fear from Rome;
I fear
the teachings of the stranger
and the renegade:
it was not because of the captains of Assyria
but because of the priests of Baal
that the ten tribes were lost among the Medes.
Now, instead of the calves
of the rustic Canaanites,
the gods of Olympus —
Aphrodite and Artemis, Zeus and Apollo:
gods of those
who have slaves
and spend their days in gymnasiums,
or in groves talking of wisdom,
and their nights at banquets —
Sodomites;
but our God is the God of Adam,
who must earn his bread,
and yet not the God of the fishermen,
of slaves
and the silly women of Rome,
the followers of Jesus,
who have scraps of the psalms
and the teachings of the Essenes
and of Hillel,
who talk of love and hell-fire,
who are witty about the Torah but believe
in a God who has a Son,
in the Virgin who gives birth,
and the God Who is slain and rises from the dead.
Jerusalem will sink and we must
escape the whirlpool
of its sinking
and save, not ourselves —
its books
in the cupboards of our minds —
but the city
of which these streets and walls,
even citadel and temple,
are only body;
if Judah
shall ride the flood
which rolls down upon the world
to bring all living under its cold waters,
come,
brothers in learning as in arms,
when battlements and fortresses,
strongholds and castles sink,
only a school
will float our cargo.