They have given you French names
And mad^ you captive, my rugged troublesome compatriots;
Your splendid beards, here, are epicene, plaster white
And your angers
Unclothed with Palestinian hills quite lost in this immense and ugly edifice.
You are bored—I see it—sultry prophets with priests and nuns
(What coarse jokes must pass between you!)
and with those morbidly religious
I.e. my prize brother-in-law
Ex-Lawrencian
Pawing his rosary, and his wife
Sick with many guilts.
Believe me I would gladly take you
From this spidery church
Its bad melodrama, its musty smell of candle and set you both free again
In no make-believe world of sin and penitence
But the sunlit square opposite
Alive at noon with arrogant men.
Yet cheer up Ezekiel and you Jeremiah who were once cast into a pit;
I shall not leave you here incensed, uneasy among alien Catholic saints
But shall bring you from time to time
my hot Hebrew heart
As passionate as your own, and stand
With you here awhile in aching confraternity.
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