Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; I am weary to bear them; yea, when ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers I will not hear; your hands are full of blood! Isaiah 1:13
I found the old book
in the surplus store
nestled among things
no one wanted anymore.
The poet will not be me.
A beautiful old book will write the poetry.
I will not fail to write you by every caravan that leaves.
We entered the gateway of which Samson carried away the gates.
Clouds of incense floated above the multitude.
The east blushed with a roseate purple, and the morning star was melting into its depths.
The stillness of the hundred streets within the walls of Jerusalem.
I was awe-silent.
Jerusalem, started, as one man, from its slumbers.
The murmur of voices was like the continuous roll of the surge
upon the beach, and the walls of the lofty Temple, like the cliff,
echoed it back.
I stood rather as a spectator than a sharer.
How can the blood of a heifer, of a lamb, or of a goat,
take away sins?
Just as the sun dips beyond the hill of Gibeah,
overhanging the valley of Aijalon, there is heard a prolonged note
of a trumpet blown from one of the western watch-towers of Zion.
The dark cloud of sacrifice ascends in solemn grandeur,
and sometimes heavier than the evening air, falls like a descending curtain
around the Mount, till the whole is veiled from sight.