Friday 13 September 2013

Ein Karem


There is far too much going on to record a flavour of each – we had Jonah this morning and we will have Sennacherib this afternoon.   And on 9th and 10th September just some of what we had was a visit to the Aida Refugee Camp (home of some Palestinians displaced from their villages as long ago as 1948), the Chagall windows in the Synagogue at the Hadassah Hospital (showing by turns Jacob’s blessing on his mostly difficult children), and the traditional site of the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth at Ein Karem near by (one of those cleared villages, now a prosperous edge of Jerusalem community), all of which I did try to bring together for myself thus:

Ein Karem             
               
The clear characters
of Jacob’s blest sons
set, stain, colour and
illuminate  threats,
from the devouring
of one vicious wolf
to the deluge of
unstable water,

above a village,
gobbled up and cleansed,
replete and prayer full,

where once a school girl,
two periods missed,
fled to her cousins
where she startled their
own yet unborn son
with the first hint of
a beast at his throat
and of the endless
tides of innocents
to be swept away.

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