Poem: Matzah

Flat you are as a door mat
and as homely.
No crust, no glaze, you lack
a cosmetic glow.
You break with a snap.
You are dry as a twig
split from an oak
in midwinter.
You are bumpy as a mud basin
in a drought.
Square as a slab of pavement,
you have no inside
to hide raisins or seeds.
You are pale as the full moon
pocked with craters.

What we see is what we get
honest, plain, dry
shining with nostalgia
as if baked with light
instead of heat.
The bread of flight and haste
In the mouth you promise, home.

            Marge Piercy 

 

 

 

 

Gods in hiding

We must look at ourselves differently.
We are freer than we think.
We haven't begun to live yet.
The man whose light has come on in his head,
in his dormant sun, can never be kept down or defeated.
We can redream this world and make the dream real.
Human beings are gods hidden from ourselves.

        Ben Okri, The Famished Road

 

 

 

 

 

An unpaid debt

There’s no way to repay a mother’s love, or lack of it.

    Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook

 

 

 

 

Keep the appointed time

Now the LORD spoke to Moses in the Wilderness of Sinai,
in the first month of the second year
after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying:
"Let the children of Israel keep the Passover at its appointed time.
"On the fourteenth day of this month, at twilight,
you shall keep it at its appointed time.
According to all its rites and ceremonies you shall keep it."

            Book of Numbers, chap. 9, verse 1-3

 

 

 

 

 

Best April Fools joke

 

 

From an ad in six leading US newspapers April 1, 1996

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's a puzzlement

There's something in the human personality
which resents things that are clear,
and conversely, something which is attracted
to puzzles, enigmas, and allegories.

    Stanley Kubrick, Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist's Maze

 

 

 

 

 

Silence

Silence is the general consecration of the universe.
Silence is the invisible laying on
of the Divine Pontiff's hands upon the world.
Silence is at once the most harmless
and the most awful thing in all nature.
It speaks of the Reserved Forces of Fate.
Silence is the only Voice of our God.

        Herman Melville, Pierre: or, The Ambiguities