Passover Comes - Gary Horvitz

[Larry Robinson]

Passover Comes 

Passover comes with its 
wandering, its breaking through, 
with its lamentations and deliverance, 
a vehicle of mystery punctuating the night 

with its eternal voice. 
Passover comes for the delivered, 
the crouched down in the sand, 
the wandering in the blackened forest 

through halls of dust choking the words of 
passage through a blistered throat of January, 
crushed flowers awakening to freedom, 
to rejoicing, to the imminence of all sacraments. 

Passover comes to the followers huddled 
naked and silent, forgiving and forgotten 
the executioner’s frozen hand unmoving, 
his will contorted, unraveled, his tears unfelt, 

un-shed. Now we pass over this ground again 
grieving for him, for the work undone, 
for the world still broken, 
bringing home the wandering self to 

be delivered from its own stony gaze 
in the mirror of days, from the bondage 
of frozen stories, from hearts weighed 
like snow-laden branches 

impatient for spring. 
This bleeding, these songs, 
the prayers we repeat, the purity of this healing 
in the center, and being lifted by it, 

fearing always a fracture at the root, 
this is the winter and the spring of our holiness. 
We break, and we break through, 
without breaking. 

	- Gary Horvitz