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)