We have been warned, and warned again. Tonight, the only obliging outward sign, the lone telltale, is the newest moon returned. There are no more fillings of the sky, than usual. This moon filling itself with light, which is our essence, then this waning moon, waxing tidal death — the month the bodies, which had sunk then risen then sunk again, are consumed in full, the last one of them swellswallowed; treyf fishes stuffed to the gills freezing up onshore at the edge of the ice’s lap into open water, sharks with frost for fins skittering on the slick, flopping whales their flukes encased in hoar. As for the waters above, they’re drowning the stars — the dark to constellate the breaching of the astral ship, Argo Navis sinking, the ark of Noah, the vessel of Isis and Osiris…in our tradition, another New Year yet again. Vernal, and so unleavened. Unseeded, the spring of spring. Ahead into redemption. Nothing to sneeze at. A season of libels and of passings. And dadadadada. Of the seder, too, which is the order: wine, wash then green; wash and nosh. Fress your ess on nothing. But before, the streets split open, wheat that’s also ice springs up from the ground. A feather is plucked from its hide. A candle’s rolled. All that’s leavened becomes involved in an arcane exodus of sorts, sold to this goy hustling out of state for maybe less than nothing. A promise. Only a word. Equinox schquinox — what else could be its meaning, how to question winter still? Once each crumb is counted. Once each bread is broke. Swallow your tongue. Eat your teeth. Speak up.
It’ll be a fast plague. Swift, without mercy, a cold bloodless slaughter. As always, all will come too quick — is there any plague worth its lot of salt that doesn’t, that won’t, that just stands there like a pillar? Questions again, this being the season — the most pressing of which the least passing, the questions silent, implied, innumerable and so, numinous. As we sit at the Passover table topped with the yomtov tablecloth as yet unstained and the polished silver and the plate with the bone and the egg boiled hard in its mother’s own water, observe, the youngest among us should ask the oldest the following: how is this night different from all other nights? And how, for that matter, are nights different from Night? Not anymore they’re not. Have you been outside lately, you better believe it for yourself.
Then, the oldest should ask the youngest thusly: which son are you, and which not? I don’t know, all of them, none. Never again a time for resolutions. Never to begin anew. They should ask the youngest Him, which son will you be…and then — are you the One who doesn’t even know how to ask…what is a question? How to answer. Will you be at all. Or will you opt out. Don’t you want to be. When you’re all grown up to dead. Their seder to be interrupted — libelous, the matzah weeps blood. The seat at the head of the table is empty and will be forever, you’ll get used to it, I’m hoping. Think on it, Ben, my boy, my boychick, knowing that to think’s to remember, just as much. In the beginning, they died, them and their questions with them, and now they’re to begin dying again. When does it end? How? Never why. Who’s able to answer let alone think anymore with such moony racket? Remember me kindly when I’m gone.
It’s a spring in which nothing’s in season. Plant the ice, reap a frost. Unless we hoard hope, we’ll go hungry come the winter of winter. Ravenously, we’ll eat crow. Then God shall drink the air from thy mouth. A going within to go without drash…that’s the best we can expect: an exhortation to introspection, an offer soulsearching, tasked to the spirit; a custom, a commandment, a mitzvah…a recipe even, we’ll take what we’re given, we’re served — to go down into the barest cupboard in the deepest recess of the emptiest heart, to slop around for what, for mealy meaning, a pareve purpose hosted under this willfull, whirlwind moon; this lunation of denial, of limitation, waxed with worshipful privation, waned of empty reflection, empty of reflection…and so, where does that leave us?
