Ritual Hand-Washing

But why, why?  So strange
-- an anonymous oversight
or burnt to ashes in our Holocaust,
or a tractate slipped behind a shelf
in our vast library of right and wrong -- that

neither did Rabbi Yohannan ben Zakkai expound,
nor brilliant Maimonides explicate,
nor any sage Talmid Chakam, ancient or modern, tell

       why the Talmud,

which so sternly, so minutely, so expansively
demands we cleanse our hands of their impurity
with water poured from a particular cup

before eating bread,
after eating bread,
before worship,
after sleeping,
after touching a corpse,
after defecation,
before reciting a prayer,
after touching hidden parts of our body
or a menstruating woman, 
after leaving a cemetery,
and so forth, and so on, so strange

       that our Talmud

omits to command us
to wash our opened hands
up to the wrist
with water poured from a particular cup

after strangling a people to death.
.