Oct 17, 2018. Squirrel Hill is home to a large Jewish population. Above, Tree of Life Synagogue. Pam Panchak/Pittsburgh post Gazette/AP via The Washington Post.
AGAIN
By George Held
Jews are being slaughtered again, ho hum –
In serene leafy Squirrel Hill this time
After days of pipe-bomb deliveries
To Dem bigwigs, enemies of the T***p state,
As reported by those enemies of the state,
The media; now the Jews again, those
Enemies out of central casting always
On call for the demented demons
Of domination as they once again
Focus their hatred and execute scapegoats
In the name of some Judenfrei utopia
That can never exist, because once
Judenrein, those left will turn on the weak
And most despised among them
And the executions will begin again…
So don’t look for barbarians at the gate
They already are right here inside –
Inside our borders, inside our hearts
George Held writes from New York. His twentieth collection is Dog Hill Poems (Seattle, 2017). Under the Escalator, his dark fantasy for children was released last month.
He submitted this for posting on Blogfinger, although it appears now in TheNewVersenews.blogspot.com. He also is a regular contributor to Blogfinger.net.
LEONARD COHEN “Dance Me to the End of Love”
Nancy: Thank you so much for your comment. The blessing which you offered is recited when a death has occurred and, for BF readers, means in Hebrew “Blessed is the true judge.”
According to the Orthodox (via Wikipedia) it is thousands of years old and is recited in response to death and tragedy. It is a reassuring blessing to thank God for whatever comes our way.
Thank you Paul for printing George Held’s poem….a very solemn cry for the evil that is around the world…and now hatred has appeared in the United States in a synagogue filled with people worshiping there Yahweh. Baruch Dayan ha’emet. ,
Nancy Lee Schwartz Thaller
Wikipedia: Although structured as a love song, “Dance Me to the End Of Love” was in fact inspired by the Holocaust. In an interview, Cohen said of the song:
“ It’s curious how songs begin because the origin of the song, every song, has a kind of grain or seed that somebody hands you or the world hands you and that’s why the process is so mysterious about writing a song.
“But that came from just hearing or reading or knowing that in the death camps, beside the crematoria, in certain of the death camps, a string quartet was pressed into performance while this horror was going on; those were the people whose fate was this horror also. And they would be playing classical music while their fellow prisoners were being killed and burnt.
“So, that music, ‘Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin,’ meaning the beauty there of being the consummation of life, the end of this existence and of the passionate element in that consummation. But, it is the same language that we use for surrender to the beloved, so that the song — it’s not important that anybody knows the genesis of it, because if the language comes from that passionate resource, it will be able to embrace all passionate activity.”