Is not Miriam his sister, Jochabed his mother?
In the womb he looked round and saw
From furthermost stretches our wrong:
From the palaces and schools
Our pain has pierced dead generations
Back to his blood’s thin source.
As we lie chained by Egyptian men
He lay in nets of their women,
And now rejoices he has broken their meshes.
O! His desires are fleets of treasure
He has squandered in treacherous seas,
Sailing mistrust to find frank ports;
He fears our fear and tampers mildly
For our assent to let him save us.
When he walks amid our toil
With some master-mason
His tense brows, critical
Of the loose enginery,
Hint famed devices flat, his rod
Scratching new schemes on the sand:
But read hard the scrawled lines there—
Limned turrets and darkness, chinks of light,
Half beasts snorting into the light,
A phantasmagoria, wild escapade
To our hearts’ clue; just a daring plan
To the honest mason. What swathed meanings peer
From his work-a-day council, washed to and from
Your understanding till you doubt
That a word was said—
But a terror wakes and forces your eyes
Into his covertly, to search his searching;
Startled to life, starved hopes slink out
Cowering, incredulous.