Years Have Sped By

Poems

Passover - Season of Freedom

Passover days!

For whom are you free?

Days renewed-enlivened,

Days of breathing fully

In the bright spring sunshine.

 

Now as I write these lines . . .

It seems I'm in command of my senses,

Yet thoughts penetrate stubbornly,

Of yearning-in my reverie. . .

 

I take note -- most especially,

Of the suffering during the holocaust;

I take a reckoning -- essentially

In multiples, of those I've lost:--

 

My younger sisters three,

And their husbands,

that makes six;

Add seven children to the sum; --

A paragon -- every one. . .

 

Father and mother

With gifted children blessed

Then cut down,

in bloom of youth,

And not even covered with earth . . .

 

Gone-is my brother . . .

Gone is his wife. . .

Gone are their children, two . . .

Vanishing like the morning dew.

 

Wantonly they were trodden to powder;

My nerves seem of iron -- all this to bear . . .

 

Your children will ask the "Fihr kashes"¹ in wonder,

Enlighten them -- "The New Haggadah"² is here!

 

What can one recall, or say?

Flowing.blood... spilt on street and highway . . .

Bitter fate -- scattered like gunpowder, flies . . .

The dead -- -- with open, staring eyes!

 

Whom do I ask?. . . How did it happen?

How did such things come about?

Such a horror! Such destruction! -- -- --

Must the Jew for the whole world be the victim?

 

Bereft of speech -- I am quiet now . . .

The anguish, I bear heroically . . .

The smouldering ashes smoke no more . . .

Passover -- -- our holiday! . . .

 

Passover days -- -- for whom are you free!

Days renewed -- -- enlivened . . .

Days of breathing fully,

In the bright spring sunshine! . . .

1. "Fihr Kashes" - Four questions, usually asked by the youngest son or grandson as part of the "seder" service - pertaining to the customs and special foods at the Passover "seder".

2. "The New Haggadah" - Refers to the introduction of an addition to the regular service pertaining to the Holocaust and the commemoration of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising which took place, or rather began on the first night of Passover.