Twilight of the Gods

(Raanana, May 2, 2019)

Liberated from the shackles of human decency

And the bonds of fundamental morality,

Girded by Thor's hammer and Aryan superiority

They rounded us up in the small hours of night

When our innocense slept dreaming

Of unicorns and stolen kisses

Marching us half-dressed or naked

Through the streets to waiting trucks and trains

To be turned into soap or lampshades.

From our ashes, we rose up into the skies,

Not like a phoenix to renewed life

But as a constellation in night's canopy

Of six million dying embers.

When they invaded the countries around them

They liberated those peoples from their shackles

Of decency and morality too

And they also rounded us up in barns which they burnt

Or murdered us as they found us with their pitchforks

And things we never knew could be used against us.

We were not schooled in the arts of hating and killing

As they had been since time immemorial,

But we did not go like lambs to our deaths

Trusting the shepherd to lead us to pasture.

No, those of us who could steal a gun did so,

Those who couldn't but could strangle a soldier did so,

Those who couldn't protect themselves hid,

And those who couldn't hide waited in fear

For death's coming.

Of the six million, like any other people,

Neither more nor less,

One hundred and twenty thousand were blessed with genius.

Moshele, two years old, would have cured cancer,

Rochele, unborn dead with her murdered mother,

Would have wiped out hunger in our world,

And Hannale, three months old, would have brought peace.

Six million worlds

Six million possibilities

Shorn from our tree of life.

This morning the sirens sounded throughout the land

Calling us to stand silently thinking our own thoughts

Of what happened so long ago

And what might have happened

Had those other things not occurred.

Leaves flitted to earth in the warm wind,

Birds flew and dogs barked.

Some would say to us, “The world has moved on

And you should too,”

But the world stands still for those who remember

And circles around for those who forget.