My father, mother, brothers, and sisters

This moving eulogy is in the voice of a dead child addressing his family members. The child compares his former beauty to a citron (Hebrew: etrog), which is used in the celebration of the Sukkot festival and prized in the Jewish tradition as a beautiful, aromatic fruit. He likens his upbringing to that of a well-watered blade of grass. By burying him in “a house that will not disintegrate until my corpse disintegrates,” his family has lacked compassion for his youthful beauty. Ellipses indicate lacunae in the manuscript.