Ram Offering

“They pledged to put away their (foreign) wives and being guilty,
they offered a ram of the flock for their offense.”
–Ezra 10:19

“. . . all the people sat in the open square . . . trembling
because of the matter and the heavy rain.”
–Ezra 10:9

Over and over,
the begats which really bless me.
Lists of names.

In the beginning,
so many songs devoted to lineage.
Shooting stars.

These ai-ending names,
soft on my lips as
bourekas almost

muffle those words in red:
Anyone who loves his family
 more than Me.

Oh Ezra, the blood is never enough.
Not even in the days of prophets,
good kings and bad.

Repentance is turning your back
on the child and its mother
every time—

putting away what is sundry,
flowing, for the ease
of one true thing.

How is it that one prostrate man,
tears in his eyes,
is worth more than a hundred,
pumping?