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Promised Land
Promised Land - Samuel Menashe
One needn't know the specific part of the Bible to which the poem alludes but even people who don't know about the Promised Land, when they hear this poem they seem to know it, it reaches them even though they don't know the Bible.
Promised Land
At the edge
Of a world
Beyond my eyes
Beautiful
I know Exile
Is always
Green with hope –
The river
We cannot cross
Flows forever
From The Niche Narrows: New and Selected Poems (Talisman House Publishers, 2000), copyright © Samuel Menashe 2000, used by permission of The Library of America for the Estate of the author.