Once again, this locked-down Pesach, 
there could be no Elijah, not even a virtual one, 
the door firmly shut, though the family’s old 
silver wine cup, filled to the brim, awaits him, 
as it did last year and had done over 
many joyous years, welcoming.
You never knew.
 
The long dining room table, normally 
set for twenty or so, is set for two.
 
Yet we celebrate as best we can,
Zooming and Skyping as many will,
a Passover service like no other.
 
‘Next year in Jerusalem’ is what we say.
‘Next year anywhere’ is what we pray.
The songs we sing are in a minor key.
 
‘Why is this night different from all other nights?’
the family’s youngest normally asks.
Why indeed.
 
This Seder night there are even more
than the usual questions, and fewer answers, 
more to contemplate than the bitter
herbs and unleavened bread we eat
and the story of the Exodus we repeat.
 
The ten gruesome plagues God visited
on the Egyptians are all too real this night
as thousands round the world still fall 
to an invisible one every bit as cruel.
 The drops of wine we spill, one by one,
as each of those plagues is recalled
seem to have become more like real blood 
than the blood they symbolize.
 
That we should be continuing to suffer
one ourselves while extolling others
may be history’s irony.
Is God’s hand in this?
 
Let our people go, but let all people live.
Now is the time to reconcile and forgive.
 
 
Jeremy Robson’s ‘The Heartless Traffic: New and Selected Poems’  is published by Smokestack