And it will come to pass when the days grow long, and will be
like all the days of the world,
One shape will they have, like yesterday and the days before, Days of no feature, of little rest, much toil,
And weariness will befall every man,
And the wilderness seizes man and beast.
At dusk man goes to the sea to take a stroll,
And looks, and, behold, the sea does not nee,
And he yawns.
And he goes to the Jordan, and, behold, it turns not back,
And he yawns.
And he looks at the Orion and the Pleiades, and they have not
moved away from their places,
And he yawns.
And man and beast together sit in weariness,
And heavy upon them is the burden of their life.
Each man tears out his hair from weariness,
And the cat loses its whiskers.
Then the yearning will arise.
Of itself it will rise, as the wild mushroom rises
On the rotting wooden beam.
And the yearning fills all the holes and cracks
As lice fill rags.
And when man returns home to eat his evening meal,
And dips in vinegar his bread and salted fish,
He yearns.
And when he drinks his muddy, lukewarm beverage,
He yearns.
And when he takes off his shoes and socks on the edge of the bed, He yearns.
And man and beast will sit together and yearn.
Each man in his dream howls from the overflow of yearning,
And on the tin roof the cat claws and caterwauls.

Then the hunger will come.
And the hunger will peak and spread as never before,
Not a hunger for bread and for vision, but for the Messiah! And each morning, as the sun rises,
And each man gets up from his bed and from the depth of his
chamber,
Broken by sleeplessness, sated with dreams, and empty of soul,
And while the webs of a wrathful sleep cover his eyelids,
And the dread of night is in his bones,
And while the wailing of the cat and the scratching of its claws
Dig into his brain and his bowels,
He hurries to his window and wipes the steam from the pane,
Or to the threshold and shades his eyes with his hand,
And lifts up a bleary eye, a feverish eye, hungry for succor,
To the narrow path beyond his yard
And to the dung heap opposite his house
And seeks the Messiah!
And the woman awakes and folds hack her blanket,
And her hair is disheveled, her flesh crushed, and she is gloomy
of spirit,
And pulls out her shriveled breast from the mouth of her child,
And bends an ear and listens eagerly:
Is the Messiah coming yet?
Can one hear the braying of his ass?
And the child from its cradle raises its head,
And the mouse peeps out of its hole:
Is the Messiah coming yet?
Is the bell of his she-ass ringing?
And the servant-girl blows into the fire under the kettle,
And turns her sooty face toward the door:
Is the Messiah coming yet?
Can one hear the blast of his trumpet?

Source: Raphael Patai, The Messiah Texts, Wayne State University Press