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O God of Mercy
Choose—
another people.
We are tired of death, tired of corpses,
We have no more prayers.
Choose—
another people.
We have run out of blood
For victims,
Our houses have been turned into…
Without Jews, no Jewish God.
If, God forbid, we should quit
this world, Your poor tent’s light
would out.
Abraham knew You in a cloud:
since then, You are the flame
of our face, the rays
our eyes…
I weep for you with all the letters of the alphabet
that made your hopeful songs. I saw how reason spent
itself in vain for hope, how you strove against regret—
and all the while your hearts were…
Gassing the woodchucks didn’t turn out right.
The knockout bomb from the Feed and Grain Exchange
was featured as merciful, quick at the bone
and the case we had against them was airtight,
both exits…
When I was twelve, I read The Diary of Anne Frank.
I identified with her having to live
stories above a busy street
over a business, and having to keep quiet
for hours at a time.
I’d pad about on…
I always thought
I had been here before.
Each year of my patched-up life
I mended the fabrics
of my decrepit, tattered world.
In memory I recognized faces and smiles,
even my father and mother…
For Jews, the Cossacks are always coming.
Therefore I think the sun spot on my arm
is melanoma. Therefore I celebrate
New Year’s Eve by counting
my annual dead.
My mother, when she was dying…
“All right,” someone will say, “granted you are a Pole. But in that case, why ‘we jews’?” To which I answer: because of blood “Then racialism again?” No, not racialism at all. Quite the contrary.
Th…
The letters of the Jews as strict as flames
Or little terrible flowers lean
Stubbornly upwards through the perfect ages,
Singing through solid stone the sacred names.
The letters of the Jews are…
Father, adonoi, author of all things
of the three states,
the soft light on the barn at dawn,
a wind that sings
in the bracken, fire in iron gates,
the ram’s horn,
Furnisher, hinger of…