These Are The Words

These Are The Words: a poem on Deuteronomy 1:1-5

These are the words

of Moses to all Israel 

in the wilderness of moral wandering,

when they were

caught between the devil and the deep Red Sea 

of divine judgment, 

between their calling, 

the promise made to them,

and doubt caught in their throat,

so that even sweet manna was hard to swallow, 

and in the place where the tongue was tied and hung, 

where one was tried for slander, 

even its thought, 

but through chastisement was forgiven,

but another was hung by the neck of pride, 

when the earth itself 

would not stand beneath his feet;

Moses spoke all these words

because the unworthiness of the sinner 

was counted by the multitude

as being greater 

than the worthiness of the Creator,

and the image of sin 

was cast by them in gold, 

in order that the angel of the offering 

might itself be worshiped as a saviour. 

It is one day and ten

from receiving the Torah

to the entrance gate into the promised land.

It is one day with the one who is one,

three days as one.

And it is ten days square,

ten days square that take 

four hundred years,

and seem to last forever.

So it was the fortieth year,

the eleventh month,

day one,

once he had crushed the head of the Amorites

and he had crushed the head of the fallen giants

from before the Flood,

trampling under foot the serpent

who had stolen their holiness,

who crouched at their door,

that Moses spoke to the children of Israel,

in the land of Moab,

the land of the convert,

according to everything

that their God had told him,

so that when they finally awoke

from their sadness to hear him,

they would find the Shekinah

already adorning them

in the entrance chamber

of the Holy Bridal Suite,

there on the threshold of the land of joy,

where they would await

the appearing of the Groom,

to come and carry them across.