Israel Silberhaft, Peter Austin, Ben Krengel, Bev Moss-Riley
Why we cry
We cry for the lost moment
The excruciating and the endless torment
We hold the world in our hand
But conventions we cannot bend
We yield and bear and conform
Dreading the coming frightening storm
We cannot say goodbye
Because for sure something deep in us will forever die
Israel Silberhaft
Eva’s Diary
One is famous, one forgotten;
Both, however, had to sup
Hegemony’s sauerbraten
And to drain its bitter cup.
Every unconnected layman
Knows that ‘Anne’ belongs with ‘Frank’;
Should you mention Eva Heyman,
Though, he’ll only draw a blank.
If it’s framed as an enquiry,
You can answer that, like Anne,
She confided in a diary
When her holocaust began,
Though she didn’t find an attic
In Varad (near Budapest),
Making rather less dramatic,
Though it hastened, her arrest.
Her opinions – so observant,
Of a world so inhumane –
She’d entrusted to a servant,
Ere they thrust her on the train.
They had been a living treasure,
Not a bundle in a drawer,
If she’d only had the leisure
To record a hundred more.
Peter Austin
[Eva Heyman began her diary in February, 1944.
Less than four months later, she was deported to
Auschwitz and put to death]
Ibises
White Ibises of Benoni
Fly from Lakeside
Forever eastward.
Their patrols
Skirt the heights
Weaving swerving out of sight
Wings beating in straight lines
To vleis, ponds & streams.
Raucous, wading deep
Waters squirming with grubs & worms.
Splashing, catching
Food to eat
Bodies long & sleek
Bobbing bent beaks.
They return in flight
Before the night
Settle down in trees
Keeping one another company
The branches rustle
With caws & peeps
Before they settle down to sleep.
Ben Krengel
The aftermath of Yom Tov
The aftermath of Yom Tov
Is filled with good intention
Lose a kilo, maybe more, enough to make a mention
Get in shape for summer or the simcha soon to follow
Until all we do again is pack it in and swallow!
Why do we feel victimised with cardiac arrests
When we tend to earn the likes of them
Yet what we love to do is fress
Bev Moss-Riley
