Insult
Jew, you’ve yelled at him, seething with rage.
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.
For him it symbolized glory and martyrdom.
Tragic grandeur, the meaning he heard.
Totally pure, like the lily, a hymn.
Like the lily, for him, a beautiful word.
…
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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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A Short History of Israel, Notes and Glosses
A hundred generations, yes, a hundred and twenty-five,
had the strength each day
not to eat this and that (unclean!)
not to say this and that,
not to do this and that (unjust!),
and with all this…
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
twists…
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.
I don’t…
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,
Spe…
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…
Non omnis moriar
“Even if you kill us, we will leave traces,” insists the poet. Poems such as this one affirm the power of humanity even in the midst of atrocities committed by neighbors.