Moments of Hope
Jews, let us be cheerful!
It won’t be long, don’t fear—
The war will soon be over.
Their end is very near.
Cheerful, don’t you worry.
Don’t go around so sad.
Have both hope and patience—
Bear things and be glad.
Only hope and patience.
Don’t let them out of hand.
Our ancient weapons
Help us together band.
Revel, dance, you butchers.
It won’t be…
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Related Guide
Holocaust and Post-Holocaust Fiction and Poetry
1939–1973
Jewish literature developed individual rather than collective voices, as postwar Jewish identity was transformed by the forces of modernism and assimilation.
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Jew, you’ve yelled at him, seeking to shame him.
Jew, no better word can you find to defame him.
Jew, no better word to vent your disdain.
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A hundred generations, yes, a hundred and twenty-five,
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not to say this and that,
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Hagar
Hanging her corals on the night she leaves
silent, possessing nothing.
A moon dives, a splash extinguished
in a wall of water.
Alone, just herself, the path
blown clean with white godhead
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Jezebel
The days of my life pass by, dissolve like mist.
I don’t know the what and when; I don’t know the who.
Baal and Astarte have grown alien to me.
My kingdom and my foes grow alien, too.
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Cain and Abel
Dost thou sleep, my brother Abel,
That thou art so wonderfully fair?
Never have I seen thee
As beautiful before.
Does the beauty lie in my ax,
Or is it, perhaps, in thee?
Before the day is done,
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The Butterfly
He was the last. Truly the last.
Such yellowness was bitter and blinding
Like the sun’s tear shattered on stone.
That was his true color.
And how easily he climbed, and how high.
Certainly, climbing…