I am publishing this poem here because of the thorough apathy I have found it gained with every last publisher I showed it to. Because the publishing world has rejected it and it is short, I will give it to the public, free of charge. It is the Jewish view of when the Mashiach (messiah) will finally come. Everyone will have “gone good” or “gone bad” but not a single one of us will be someplace in between. That is the Jewish idea. Yet nobody knows whether it will be that humankind will have redeemed itself or proven itself totally unworthy except God. So we wait because “though he may tarry, still he will come,” for our redemption’s harbinger of God’s Kingdom in Heaven and on Earth.
Never trust paradox;
it lies like a riddler
and yet one rests on my heart:
they say the messiah comes
either when all Israel is good
or when finally Israel has become
as corrupt as the shallow earth
on which she is expected to grow,
the hard earth with her pebble and brambles
which choke plants growing up
the flower for which the world
of weeds continues to exist, free and wild
like Israel before Saul and David.
The messiah will come—
not when the Jews are pure
when martyrs are lit with fires,
like Rabbi Akiba in his torch,
or when scholars study her treasures
by reason’s and the moon’s light,
or when brilliant heretics fall away
like Spinoza with his ethics
breathing the faith that God and Nature are one.
The messiah will come—
when Jews are finally known
as reprobates worse than gentiles,
when their sins move Abraham to tears
and Isaac to laments
and Jacob to self-immolation—
because their synagogues lie empty
on even Yom Kippur
and their yarmulkes and prayer books
lie abandoned in the shul
far from any practice at home.
Then the messiah will come.
When the messiah comes he will smile,
“Good work. I am here at last.”