(Poetry, Vol 72, #1, Pesach 2017)
Such a question….
And God said
“Adam knew Eve.”
One cryptic
apocalyptic
word.
A sanction for loving?
To lose oneself
in a glorious moment
of ecstasy.
Would the world
Have changed
if God had said
“Now Adam
understands
Eve….?”
Bernard Levinson
Night Flight
And in the night
My fears take flight
And I lie
With guilt and doubt
But in the day
These fears allay
And somehow
I shut them out
But in the night
I shake with fright
Waves of sickness
Wash over me
But in the day
I go my way
And think:
‘What will be, will be’
But in the night,
I lose my fight
And don’t know
Wrong from right
Yet in the dawn
With nerves shattered and torn
I look to
The morning light
Charlotte Cohen
The Eternal Quest of My People
I come and go, I search and search,
The voices of our fathers, I no longer hear.
Silent cries haunt me
My eyes dart and search and search
The only remains are the souls of my people.
On the Street of the Jewish Martyrs
Weep bitter tears flow non-stop
From the old fountain still upstanding.
I take a walk in the old Street of the Tailors
The sewing machines no longer sing.
The seamstresses prick their fingers no more.
Those who sewed shrouds had none.
Smoke took them on far-away skies.
A puzzled couple asks:
“Did the children of Shadday lived here?
How many remain in Rhodes?”
I look at the deep blue sky and reach for
the perfume of roses,
I smell ashes and grey is the sky.
I push the doors of Kahal Shalom, I step in
Nobody prays, faces have no features,
Silence is audible, the temple is empty.
I murmur Kaddish, the forbidden pray
As I stand alone in the synagogue.
As I approach La Puerta di la Mar
I imagined all Jewish homes whitewashed,
Tables adorned and places well set:
Passover is about to start, but
The story of the enslaved Jews
Never was to be recalled.
Bombs erased it all.
At cock-crow, I get up, isolated.
I no longer hear the footsteps of the men
Rushing through the narrow streets
On their way to the seashores
In order to cast their sins into the sea
As the ten days of penitence approaches.
On the 23rd of July 1944
Anguish befell upon the Jews of the island.
The Germans took them away.
In one day, this ancient community was
no more.
Auschwitz-Birkenau, received my people.
They had reached the end of their journey.
This was on the 27th of the month of Av.
Isaac Habib
Mein Leben
Mein Leben is shoin a lange tzait
Fil lebens-bilder zain varby
A tsvaite Milchoma gedainkt mit
Shreklige Gesheenish!
Tsu lernen fun die Shoa un Durg derkenen
der veitiken fun Falorene Neshomas!
Vie ken a yugentlech dos iber leben?
Es vet stayn in unser hertzen bis-vanet
Mir gain tsu Yenem Velt
Moe Skikne
[My Life/My Life is now a long time/Many life images have flitted by/ A second War in childhood days remembered/as shocking scary events!/ To learn of the Shoa and acknowledge/the pain of lost Souls/How can adolescence survive that?/These will stay in our hearts until we/enter the World to Come].
SHort VISIt on EartH
Someone reminded me,
in the early hours of this morning
that our stay on earth is only a stage in the journey of our
soul
I woke up wondering why this message came to me
today?
I think it was to remind me that Death is not the dark black
skeletal figure portrayed by so many artists
Rather, Death is an angel of Light sent down by the Ein
Sof
to help lift our souls onward and upwards
to the shining light of the Shekhinah,
so that She may send our soul to the next level
suitable for our neshoma
abigail Sarah Bagraim
