A Jewish poet writes these words:
Arise and go now to the city of slaughter;
Into its courtyard wind thy way;
There with thine own hand touch, and with the eyes of thine head,
Behold on tree, on stone, on fence, on mural clay,
The spattered blood and dried brains of the dead.
Proceed thence to the ruins, the split walls reach,
Where wider grows the hollow, and greater grows the breach;
Pass over the shattered hearth, attain the broken wall
Whose burnt and barren brick, whose charred stones reveal,
The open mouths of such wounds, that no mending
Shall ever mend, or healing heal.
There will thy feet in feathers sink, and stumble
On wreckage doubly wrecked, scroll heaped on manuscript,
Fragments again fragmented –
Pause not upon this havoc; go thy way.
The perfumes will be wafted from the acacia bud
And half its blossoms will be feathers,
Whose smell is the smell of blood!
And, spiting thee, strange incense they will bring –
Banish thy loathing – all the beauty of the spring,
The thousand golden arrows of the sun,
Will flash upon thy malison; (curse)
Over thy sorrow joyously will pass,
For God called up the slaughter and the spring together –
The slayer slew, the blossom burst, and it was sunny weather!
Then wilt thou flee to a yard, observe its mound.
Upon the mound lie two and both are headless –
A Jew and his hound.
The self–same axe struck both, and both were flung
Unto the self–same heap where swine seek dung;
Tomorrow the rain will wash their mingled blood
Into the runnels, and it will be lost
In rubbish heap, in stagnant pool, in mud.
Its cry will not be heard.
It will descend into the deep, or water the cockle–burr,
And all things will be as they ever …………
Wherefore, O Lord, and why?
From the “City of Slaughter”
By Chaim Nachman Bialik
Page created 7 July 2006