"And in the First Year of Cyrus," poetry

First Edition: LukivPress Online (Quesnel, BC), 2012.

Revised Edition: LukivPress (Victoria, BC), 2022.

Introduction

The book of Ezra (covering 537 to 467 BCE) begins where Second Chronicles ends (537 BCE). Ezra, of the Aaronic priesthood, relates Persian King Cyrus' decree for a remnant of exiled Jews in Babylon to repatriate Jerusalem and "rebuild the house of Jehovah" (the temple that Nebuchadnezzar sacked and burned in 607 BCE). Firsthand they experience the fulfillment of Jehovah's prophecy that 70 years of exile from Jerusalem (607 to 537 BCE) would actually end (as written at Jeremiah 29:10; Jeremiah completed his prophetic book in 580 BCE!).

Although enemy nations work overtime to threaten and discourage the repatriated Jews and paralyze their efforts to build the temple, they persevere. Ezra provides courageous leadership! The finished temple (515 BCE) stands as a testimony of Hebrew courage and faith and as a foreshadow of future days of Jehovah's goodwill towards his people.

An excerpt

Chapter 10

On three rocks they sat,

But the boy faced the Wilderness

Of Judah and the backs of people

Walking. "Mother, he won't

Speak to me." Her mother

Chewed bread she'd

Torn. "Mother!" The girl's

Mother also stared at the backs

Of the walking people. "Aren't

You listening to me?"

"Mother!"

With tears dripping from her

Chin, the Moabitess ex-wife

Swallowed, and said, "Children

Belong with their mother,

My daughter."

The author

Dan Lukiv, published in 19 countries, is a poet, novelist, columnist, short story and article writer, and independent education researcher (hermeneutic phenomenology). As a creative writer, he apprenticed with Canada's Professor Robert Harlow (recipient of the George Woodcock Achievement award for an outstanding literary career), the USA's Paul Bagdon (Spur Award finalist for Best Original Paperback), and England's D. M. Thomas (recipient of the Cheltenham Prize for Literature, Orwell Prize [biography], Los Angeles Fiction Prize, and Cholmondeley award for poetry). He attended The University of British Columbia (creative writing department), the acclaimed Humber School for Writers (poetry writing program), and Writer's Digest University (novel writing program).