Dream Subverted
Benighted Nations unyielding in your Argus-eyed
façade.
Your unfounded pride
Like a tower you raise
High above the city;
Fraudulent deceivers possessed by false hope,
betrayed trust.
And behind your dark portals lie your creators,
Prisoners of your discontent.
They are more compromised than you,
Stripped of their honesty, of their virtue,
Bereft of their compassion, of their humanity,
And of all hope.
Nary a glimmer of an honest soul
In this oppressive air —
Captive to their fear.
The founders’ dreams now re-forged by your
delirium,
Eroding all people’s lives.
Millions dead, ignored in the name of Zion’s
persecution.
And with each passing daynight.
Yes the night, its inky darkness
Possesses our minds
Without limits on time or hate.
Bigotry is the coin of your corruption.
Boldfaced lies are your devalued currency.
Blinkered minds eschew the simple truth.
Fairness, honesty and right do you abjure.
But, yet, there is a voice almost inaudible
That somehow finds an ear, a mind, a soul.
Can this be the faint stirrings of awakening God?
The sun, the enervated sun,
Its feeble light awakes the suppressed tide of
righteousness.
Undertones of blood, of marrow,
The dashing of feeble wings against grotty windows
Like weak flashes that melt the pervasive darkness
within.
Voices raised above the cacophony of ignorance
and hate,
Can we yet arise in time to preserve chaste
mankind’s fate?
Rodney Mazinter
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
(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 Shoah 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).
Maurice Skikne
Mountains in Mourning
(composed in the wake of the Table Mountain fires, 2015)
Fires, Flames
Furious .. Feckless
Reckless .. Ruthless .. Fuming .. Blazing
Grabbing .. Gripping .. Gorging .. Raging
Cinders .. Timbers .. Flattened … Blackened
Wildlife, Earth-life
Burning .. Dying
Broken .. Stricken .. Parched … Scorched
Scarred .. Charred .. Searing .. Smoking
Blistered .. Twisted … Trampled … Torched
Manic, savage devastation
Ruthless, merciless ruination
And when the water
Douses the heat
It cries with the rocks
That stand stark
And weep
Charlotte Cohen
Erratum: In the Pesach 2015 of Jewish Affairs, Charlotte Cohen’s name was accidentally omitted from the bottom of her poem ‘Nothingness’. We apologise for the error.
