Hart, Kevin: Jerusalem

This is where the deserts end.
This is the city where the dead still live.
Here, at evening,
The sun and moon are both still full,
And when you arrive
The road can take you nowhere else.
Enter this inn
And see its empty table, its dead fire,
This window where
Those distant mountains stare into the past.

Remember
That woman with a broken jar,
That young man
Feeding swine in the sad desert twilight.

They say that silence leads us here,
That we are led
As if by hand, wind running fingers through the dust;
Inside, the silence
Will take you by the hand.
Here you bow to enter doors;
Here, a man once came
As one of us
To speak of all that we are not.

Now feel this stillness
Where two opposing forces clasp: this is the room
Where bread is broken
To make us whole, the inn of our desire.