The Hunger
At the parting of forty seven
In the great shedding of skin
We moved still wet
Out of our cracked scale.
We had known this of old and thought
The tide of things re grow
Its flesh and all scar and heal,
Watched it now crack again
Layer after layer until
By forty nine the bare bone
Bone dry of marrow
Ended our expectation.
2
We had thought until then
That they who lorded over us
Must have mercy on us.
We had thought the great plight
Might bring the great repeal
And name our names, raise us, raise us,
Christ, we prayed night to night
We prayed to dream and child’s call
And call again, and dream again,
Into gull and gannet’s wail,
Into voices telling us
Nature itself was evicting us.
3
Out on the Atlantic shoreline
The tidal lungs of ocean move.
Beyond drought, beyond rain,
Beyond the river’s offering
Flow and hollow fill and leave.
We stay awhile, we stand and hear
The turn at dawn, the morning roar
Into evening’s long lament
Face past our moment,
Sound past our lingering.
And now must ride the ghostly boat
And enter blindly to it’s keep,
Enter down the ocean’s plight
The lunar craving of the deep.
4
Slow movers in the Sinai
Forge their sandy waves.
Behind, the Red Sea line
As a glow of distant land
Holds out on the horizon.
They stop. They turn. They face west
The great concourse,
A minute’s silence to their saviour
Thinning between heaven and earth.
The dust settles to their quiet.
The moments hold the vast peace
Until a shout breaks it up
And all turn and move again,
The city on the march
In full deliverance,
On toward the kingdom,
To the milk, to the wild honey,
Old heads full of freedom.
Young heads full of victory
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