Pharaoh The Dead

A Poem On Ezekiel 32

Pharaoh,

You old crawling crocodile!

You thought you were a young lion

with your voice roaring through the trees

of the Garden of Eden.

You mortally wounded dragon!

You decrepit evil inclination.

You took possession of fallen Adam,

like some putrid demon 

taking possession of vain flesh. 

Hashem is speaking to you 

and you are going to hear!

Hashem has you marked for destruction. 

He has set you up for annihilation. 

You were a water serpent

a writhing river, writhing through the dust,

since the day you were cast down  

to crawl on your belly in the the dust of death.

You built an oasis

a home of dreams in the dead lands. 

But you coveted for your own the Land of the Living. 

Hashem will exterminate you before the face of his people.

You slitherer, 

he has given you crawling legs 

that you might crawl to the place of your hunger and lust, 

the place of your slaughter. 

Your corpse shall be spread upon the earth.

Your dust shall become a cloud of darkness

upon the face of all the heavens.

All the creatures of the earth shall celebrate your demise.

They shall claim their victory when you die.

When you will climb to the heights, 

hungering to open your great mouth

and consume the whole House of the Living,

you shall gather all of Edom and the kings of the north 

with the power of your tail,

to bring them as your footmen to your feast. 

You shall empower them with terrorism

against the Land of the Living, 

by breathing the poison of your breath into their nostrils. 

And when you bite off what you can neither chew nor swallow, 

there you will die. 

And you will go down then 

to lie in the emptiness and stillness of an endless consumption 

with the others who have been brought down 

through your uncircumcised heart,

your uncircumcised pride, 

the flesh that Hashem has not chosen. 

You sought to swallow up Hashem's house

and you shall be swallowed up by the earth

and go down and down to Pharaoh's hell.

Assyria has its community there.

and Elam, that belly of Persia,

is represented there too.

Edom is also waiting there for you. 

All your offspring

who you taught to inflict terror on the Land of the Living. 

And all the nations that are pulled out of your mouth

shall see your blood and flesh made like putrid mud 

flowing in the rivers below 

and washing through the mountain valleys above.

Then the Land of the Living shall see and fear Hashem alone,

when your terror in all the earth shall be mocked

as a roaring wind empty of strength,

like a wind that has passed before it has come.

Then your terror in the Land of the Living shall be forever forgotten,

and the fear of Hashem shall bring joy to the earth without end.