ISSUE: Spring 1983
Item in the records of the Coventry Cappers,
Corpus Christi pageant, c. 1574
An afterthought? When all but one
of the glovers or joiners who signified
Red Sea had been sewn
fine caps for ready
identification? Or was it thriftily
cut in two and hung
on staffs that parted to let God’s
people go through? The waters dividing
were not more mute
about their ways and means than this
account book entry made
four hundred years ago. A wall
on the right, a wall on the left.
We know the hours a man would spend
assembling chamois or lengths of wood
to earn the sixpence that bought
the sea. We know as well as he how white
the hand appears that harms those bent
on harming us.
Gratitude’s been brief
as Pharaoh’s softened heart for longer
than his rue, so books
parcel memory: this I’ve paid,
this I owe. Though bread lie plentiful
as dew, the people shall measure
the portion they eat, and want
what the past looks like from here
as half a yard of sea might want
the moon. The wilderness
hath shut them in. The players in red
are looking the other way. And the mind
must reckon with waters that have no
mind to open or heal so legibly
again.
