Once, I sang for you
my voice a perfect pool
of pitch
of which the nation
that filed past weeping Rachel
shouldered, in open oil lamps
and wails from the leaves of Eicha-
later
we secured them inside our synagogues
so they hovered above our davening
collecting in the dome
a reservoir
echoed
rising and falling
like waves pulling slowly out to sea
recanting
and steadily swell, rushing in
to crash.
I used to sing for you
in Vilna
in Lublin
Kishinev
I sang to you in Yiddish
Hebrew
broken russkiy
and polski
from the middle of the shtiebl
walls lined with the chassidim
we faced haShem
our voices echoed the martyrs
who sang as the Romans tortured
danced in the clamps of Crusaders
pounded the earth before Red soldiers
Shema!… Shema!…
I sang to you
when we were deported
looking up to G-d in the Warsaw ghetto;
after the liquidation
the tzaddikim
were the only ones
you could still hear
singing.
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