The Broken Tablets
By Rodger Kamenetz
The broken tablets were also carried in an Ark.
In so far as they represented everything shattered
everything lost.
They were the law of broken things.
The leaf torn from the stem in a storm.
A cheek touched in fondness once
but now the name forgotten.
How they must have rumbled. Clattered on the way
even carried so carefully through the waste land.
How they must have rattled around until the pieces
broke into pieces.
The edges softened
crumbling.
Dust collected at the bottom of the ark
Ghosts of old letters. Old laws.
In so far as a law broken is still remembered.
These laws were obeyed. And
in so far as memory preserves the pattern of broken things
these bits of stone were preserved
through many journeys and ruined days
even, they say, into the promised land.
Questions to Consider and Discuss:
- What brokenness do you keep with you always?
- What have you learned from this breaking?
- Why not bury the broken tablets? Why carry them forward through the desert?
