Poem: Yesterday Morning In a Cafe on Yom HaShoah

Yesterday, sitting in a cafe in Jerusalem a siren goes off and my heart skips a beat

Rockets? Are they really shooting missiles at Jerusalem?

Then I remember… Yizkor

Earlier in the morning, in a meeting, I heard the wind moaning

Now in this cafe the siren of remembrance goes off and suddenly I am not a customer

The baristas are not baristas

We all stand. We are all Jews and our day has been interrupted

Because our people was interrupted

Because our history was interrupted

And the siren becomes the sound of Jews screaming from the past

I look out at the people standing still as stone on the sidewalk

The cars stopped in the middle of the road

We all could have disappeared

The sound doesn’t stop

Even when my ears have grown tired of the wailing and I want to say to someone ‘I get the point!’

The sound doesn’t stop even though it is no longer convenient for me

And I understand how much my ancestors wanted the Shoah to stop and it didn’t

The siren dies down and fades, the cafe music plays on

I go back to being a customer and the baristas go back to being baristas

I sit back down at my table and computer

This miracle of life in Israel goes back to calm normality

And I really get it

Why we’re like this 

Never Again.