Pesaj in Chile
AGOSIN, MARJORIE
Pesaj in Chile Tonight, unlike any other night, spring returns to its dominions of jasmine. Tonight, unlike any other night, we lean over the sites where memory of another time also...
...The elders repeat: Because we were also slaves in the land of Egypt and the jasmine moistens the lips and the song is fragrance...
...Pesaj in Chile Tonight, unlike any other night, spring returns to its dominions of jasmine...
...MARJORIE AGOSIN...
...Our learning springs forth in songs...
...Our learning springs forth in songs...
...We sing leaning over the Hagadah of Sarajevo or Alexandria and the wind of God This night so different from all other nights...
...this night where I love you, foreigner, my body receives you as if you were also a lost people...
...The younger ones ask: Why is tonight unlike any other night...
...Our learning springs forth in songs...
...Braided voices, restless gardens, like words and it is this history a gesture in the womb of our beginning...
...Sanctifies the wine and its lights, the land and its festive torches...
...My daughter opens the window to dream of the times of wheat and honey, or an open sky like the Aleph, a sky of imaginary boundaries...
...The old man of the round table, a Jewish King Arthur, whispers, moans or prays...
...The sky is different tonight, it is not like the other nights, winged, covered by prayers, soft like a song over the shadows of God...
...My son reads the Hagadah...
...Your daughter opens the door, for the arrival of the foreigners and the women with empty baskets...
...We name the stars and we repeat the name of those camps where we also died: Bergen Belsen, Dachau, Treblinka Auschwitz Tonight, like every other night we also dream of love, of the time when women gathered olives and sang mid the thresholds of sand...
...Tonight, unlike any other night, we lean over the sites where memory of another time also reclined...
...We answer him...
Vol. 27 • February 2002 • No. 1
