Exodus

That morning with primordial heat,
generating life from bedclothes
still wet with sleep,
night’s stiffened corpse was taken down
and hauled away to an empty tomb.

Chanting once again an ancient dirge,
Ecclesiastes hurried past colonnades,
around sleeping Moslems at the Golden Gate 
and north where brass and flutes still blew
hot clarified jazz of a blue-eyed race.

A jukebox for breakfast was offering blues
where sun glared hot on a black tar roof,
while at the counter, ignoring news, 
somebody murmured past an empty cup:
“I wonder where these people are going.”

No cigarette nor complacent cigar
ventured an answer since there was war
and none of the blacktops led to Rome
and everywhere is somewhere
and somewhere, none.

In any case, it was soon noon,
and business swarmed booths and counters.
The morning paper was scattered around
with “I wonder” protecting a salesman’s suit,
and “people are going” collecting glass.

“Where” in lighting an oven had blown a fuse!

But the question, debated throughout the day,
reassembled itself among the waste: 
shattered glass, stained filters, butts of chewed cigars,
could be ignored.

That night you could hear it rustle 
and still today, we continue to ask the same question,
only, now, it’s become the world.
“I wonder where this world 
will take us?