The Exile The shadows of the evening come.
Old Jonas sits with dreamy eyes
And watches children in the square.
Their laughter is like that he heard --
But that was very long ago,
Before he came to Babylon.The darkness deepens into night,
Old Jonas does not seem to know.
With tight-closed eyes he smiling sees
Judea's lovely rolling hills,
Jerusalem, his home.The stars begin to twinkle out,
Old Jonas does not stir nor move.
He is a member of a crowd
Who watch a man, a patient man,
Beside a potter's open store.The air grows colder yet more cold,
Old Jonas seems to listen now.
"Lo God is like the potter here.
He will not utterly destroy
The vessel that is slightly marred;
He but remolds it to be fair:
Thus, quietly the prophet speaks.The hour is late and Martha calls,
"Come father, come in from the night."
Old Jonas does not make reply,
For he has gone from Babylon,
Home to a potter's open store.Jeremiah 18:3-5
Should be read to thoroughly understand this poem.