Poem: Elegy, October 7th

Love is our temple; memories, incense.

Seven months was five months ago, 

now is twelve. “Today we add one more 

brick to the Beit HaMikdash,” The Rav said 

when my husband and I stood under 

the chuppah. All around, ruins, a ma’ayan, 

a hundred silent people, mesmerized by us,

by our tears, by our song, by our silence.  

Four more bricks, the Bibas family. 

One more brick, Eden Yerushalmi. 

Bricks lie in ruins, fires rage, angels weep. 

Redemption is muted, we learn, God’s trumpets 

muffled by inhumanity. Summer’s heat 

brought sweaty, lucid nightmares; but 

finally, the winds of a new year arrive. 

Cicadas hum funeral songs, the forest 

glistens still and beautiful, fathers soothe 

their crying babies, heaven’s book slowly 

closes, the cycle of life and death 

continue, the horror of captivity, 

the dark, airless underworld of evil,  

where those who remain can not feel 

the change of season, the sky’s mercy. 

Soldiers march on, young and fear-flushed, 

unable to fathom the trial that awaits;

ballistic missiles shine like falling stars 

as my husband covers me with his body 

in a field off the side of a highway, 

sirens wailing like grieving mothers, 

bombs exploding here and there, now 

and after, God, shield us from the shrapnel. 

Our ketubah bursted with flowers and 

clouds and color, dripping with black and blue

ink, details of his obligations to me; an old 

woman, each day since October seventh, sits 

in a chair with her head on the Wall, praying 

from morning till night, refusing donations. 

What a coincidence, I thought, that the day 

before this terrible day happens to be a fast day.

I afflicted myself, cried the whole day, and 

then laughed once the fast was over; sometimes 

a woman needs to laugh and cry with the same 

eyes. Rage kept me awake the entire night; 

all the bricks of the villages, the kibbutzim, 

burnt into ash, human beings charred 

in an eternal embrace, the Kutz family found 

murdered in bed, holding each other, 

Avigail Idan, four years old, taken hostage 

alone after witnessing her parents’ slaughter. 

Ten days of repentance now begin, before heaven’s 

book is closed. Every morning, the prayer

in which I place a hand over my eyes; 

every word, a brick that I carry.