SYNAGOGUE IN PRAGUE

Killers said

Before they used their slide-rules

‘Death is the way to Freedom’:

Seventy-seven thousand names

Carved on these great walls

Are a gaol Death cannot open.

Eyes close in awe and sorrow

As if that name was my mother

That boy starved to death my son

Those men gassed my brothers

Or striving cousins.

It might have been me and if it was

I spend a day searching the words

For my name.

I’d be glad it was not me

If the dead could see sky again,

Reach that far-off river and swim in it.

What can one say

When shouting rots the brain?

The dead god hanging in churches

Was not allowed to hear

Of work calling for revenge

To ease the pain of having let it happen

And stop it being planned again.

Letters calling for revenge on such a wall

Would vandalize that encyphered synagogue,

And seventy-seven thousand

Stonily indented names

Would still show through.

Vengeance is Jehovah’s own;

To prove He’s not abandoned us

He gave the gift of memory,

The fruit of all trees

In the Land of Israel.