"Dignity Restored"

Holy martyrs … kedoshim

For whom monument tall

Shouts defiantly: “NEVER AGAIN!”

at last, for once and all.

Thus hatred's reminder,

its insatiable, implacable aim,

weighing heavily upon humanity’s unforgivable shame.

Atop the bronze mount does stand there remain

Remnants of countless savagely slain:

a mother whose babe has cried its last,

an elderly Jew to whom a boy clings fast.

A partisan fighter whose gestures ignite …

one spark of the hope that flickered by night.

Amidst the rubble of days …that which had been

through the ages a beacon for men ...

the Torah commanding “Thou Shalt Not Kill ...”

albeit in ruins though applicable still!

to our lives which came after relatively free

of terror's ability to blind us who see.

Now tearful, silently stoic first gaze

while vigilance slept, its fires not ablaze ...

why desecrate this monument, a tribute to those

in whose memory we recall

so few of their woes?

Nary a night did pass ere an evil befell,

and reminded, were we all, of heaven and hell.

Now gone were the tears that had welcomed its sight,

but ready were the many to stand and fight ...

an ugly reminder whose obscenities told …

of times long since and graves since cold.

Aroused and awakened this community alert,

whose monument remained defiled as such,

to remember one and all, incredulous and carefree,

that history was not over …

as they had hoped it might be.

A garden became this memorial soon

and erased were the lies that had blackened the truth.

Dignity restored its shiny glossto words read anew …

of six million lost.

Toward heaven it points

in neither doubt nor shame,

history reminding our memories lame.

That even those departed …

must struggle to hone the spade

that will dig out

this spot

as

their

own.

Alan D. Busch copyright@2007