Archive 02/05/11

 

   

Friday Nights

                                                                  

 

For the vast indeterminacy of these last six decades,

So rampant with my loneliness's unvented torment,

I've spent every single, solitary Aruchat Shabbat

In restaurants filled with emaciated, glazed-eyed faces,

Masks attached to the ghastly tatters of the gone —

Those I recognize, yet, as my concentration-camp mates,

With whom I mumbled clandestine prayers,

Over tainted-water yayin, rock-hard lechem,

And nonexistent bentshlikht,

After beseeching the King of the Universe

(Burned in the furnaces, like so many others)

To bless us, in our time of deepest doubt.

Friday nights, when I see these welcome skeletons,

Raising toasts to ghosts living and otherwise otherwordly,

I'm reminded that the only homes I've ever really known

Were located in Theresienstadt, Buchenwald, and Auschwitz.

 

 

 

 

        

02/05/11

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
       

 

 

  
   
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