“Why is this night different from all other nights?”
– From the Passover Seder
Here I lie, chad gadya
on my hospital bed
counting my blessings
on my left hand.
I think of the life,
the life I have lived,
the life and beyond,
a river unending
that I soon will cross.
Then they come to me there
these three wise men:
a rabbi, a friar, a brahmin priest.
We all chant om,
and within I seek shanti
that since youth I had lost,
the straight path in the wood.
We slip through the wood
to lie in green pastures
by a path unending
and the comforts of His rod.
Then comes down to the valley
the shadow of Death,
that with Chokmah I perceive
as some old-new friend.
And then in my haze
the friar comes forth,
whispers love of the Lord
down into the river
before my hospital bed.
And so here I lie,
chad gadya,
and I have known them all:
the cat and the bull,
the dog and the ox,
the fire and the rain,
God and mankind.
And so here I lie,
chad gadya,
with no zuzim
to pay the ferryman Charon.
At the river unending
that I soon will reach,
I will pay Charon
with the tale of my life.
Would that he likes it,
tale of chad gadya,
that I give to him
on the banks of the Styx.
I have no zuzim
but a story to tell,
of chad gadya,
who could count all his blessings
only on his left hand.
Raymond Turco is a poet and playwright born in Hackensack, NJ, USA. He writes poems in English and Italian and has a special affinity for European history, travel, surrealism, magical realism, and absurdism. The author of nine stage plays, he has published his poetry in the Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and with Bordighera Press, among others. He sits on the Board of Directors of the Cliffside Park Arts Association and is the organization’s Director of Literature. His first chapbook, Rays of Light and Darkness, was published with Finishing Line Press in 2024.