How many boot linings did the Torah scrolls make?
How long did they have to dance round the burning scrolls,
Before pearly Vilna became Armageddon?
Before the boy who took the herring fell over?
No longer marbled in human memory,
Ash earth in a world of forests, flowers and stars,
How do you remember the murdered people?
Their blood mingled with ripe red forest apples.
The light of a thousand colours died in their eyes.
The light of a thousand colours died in their eyes.
The stony sun did not burst into crystal shards.
A barefoot tramp grabbed the last tatters of sun
In the Jerusalem of Lithuania.
He helped to save Hertzl’s diary and Chagall.
He knew the winter snow would spring into green shoots.
Orphaned because you could not save your infant son,
You carried a hiker’s bag of grey sticky ash.
You carried a hiker’s bag of grey sticky ash.
Like you Avram Sutzkever we must make witness.
Do more than climb the mountain of desolation.
Do more than climb the mountain of desolation.
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