A poem I'm working on.

[Lyric]

Passover in Warsaw

There's a garden on Okopowa Street that calls
to me tonight, when dusk lays thick
in seams of wine and gold across the sky.
The avenue slips smoothly by
beneath the tap of booted feet—-a beat
below the rising moon that silvers
the walk, dragging jagged cracks of light
across the crumbling curb. There is no broken
glass to see, no shattered doors, no covered
mirrors. There's nothing but me and the moon
passing over this quiet street.

Haec lacrimae Dei sunt. Lacrimae Dei.

Along this path I walk alone, filling
up my hands with stones--cold rocks to heed
the precious ache of older tears
that memory can’t unweep.
Tonight I open this old chest,
tonight I break this bitter bread--
a twisted cross, a desert star,
the hollow, fading, echoes
of a hunted, haunted tree.
By the moon they pace behind me,
dark blue scratched on shaking skin, and a lie
that stalks me fierce, like the smoke
of five black chimneys.

Arbeit macht frei. Verstehen Sie?

The iron gates are silent, brooding
dark the nameless nights, the years
of feet and hats and tears, a refuge
for a bloody price. This garden grows
in marble rows, blooming forth a thousand names
that prayed me here with a pocketful of rocks.
All stillness now, and night-dark grass, and dust.
One by one, I offer a stone to those who bore
the sharpest weight, the ones who left an empty seat
and suffered to reap the bitterest herbs
that man has ever sown.

Zeh Mah Sheyesh
Shalom.