(a trifle)

How can we remember
The good things of Jerusalem
Who were born into Babylon?
How can a man who’s never ate
The melon of a psalm
Tell what they eat in Babylon
Apart from honeyfruit?

Imagination has no images.
It was not fed on Windermere.
It was not given Cuchulain,
The wrestling with Proteus,
Narcissus staring in a mirror.

We needn’t mention what it has,
Except to mention golden calves.
But holy images it does not know.
In Egypt, how explain the snow?

But manna comes when none expect.
Like dew it gathers on the heart,
As dew by night upon a stone.
The angels, say the sages, know
The inner principles of things we feel
With mouth and finger, blood and bone.
May God set us a table, then,
Before the faces of our enemies.
And we shall fast us in this foreign land
Till we ourselves become his bread.