Pogrom: A Poem
Will the hunters come again to our abode tonight, seeking our souls
with gun threats? Will they come quiet and furtive, until the crack
of a shot cuts through the crickets? Perhaps they will arrive with a shofar blast
like the lords of the land subduing the world, bringing their sons
to teach them the wiles of war, carrying our corpses on shoulders broad,
smiling, victorious, in promenade.
Will they then get drunk around the bonfire out back? Maybe
they’ll tell each other tales of shell flak and spines snapped.
Will they delight in drunken heat to the taste of meat, a trail of fresh blood
dripping down their shirts
to their knees
to the floor
in the earth absorbed.
Perhaps they’ll finally recall the sharp scent of dying prey
convulsing before a hunter, a gun, a child
with kind eyes who heard a cry
saw someone die and realized: His soul too
will ascend to Heaven one day.
–September 2022 (translated from the Hebrew by Shai Secunda, November 2023)
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