Two Poems: Jean Nordhaus
The Promised Land In the end, it was such a small country, just a place he happened to pass on his wanderings and felt himself born to as when, walking a strange street on a cold night, you glimpse a lit room you mistake for your spirit’s true home. And, really, it wasn’t much: a few date palms, a pool of clear water, a hillock— It’s just that something holy may once have set foot there, and that it took so long to get back and that in the annals of exile, the exiles are long and the homecomings short—the joyous arrivals surrendering all too soon to the old irritations and rivalries. Just that a mercurial deity may once have made too many promises. To a child, adulthood is the promised land. To the invalid, a sturdy heart. To the hungry, a bowl of rice, a plate of greens.