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.