While Israel Burns jyungar November 28, 2016 “And who by fire, who by water,Who in the sunshine, who in the night time,Who by high ordeal, who by common trial,Who in your merry merry month of may,Who by very slow decay,And who shall I say is calling?And who in her lonely slip, who by barbiturate,Who in these realms of love, who by something blunt,And who by avalanche, who by powder,Who for his greed, who for his hunger,And who shall I say is calling?And who by brave assent, who by accident,Who in solitude, who in this mirror,Who by his lady's command, who by his own hand,Who in mortal chains, who in power,And who shall I say is calling?”In Memoriam, Leonard CohenArriving on Thanksgiving (sic)Israel burnsI do not feel the heatNor the smell of burning treesLike I once did when the Ramot forest behind my house burnedNo, this is different,Seen only the TV screen,From the vantage of the Elysium fields and the brilliant skies of JerusalemOnly visual images of cloudy skies over Haifa,it is merely a chimera,(Arutz Sheva or CNN,)And papers with op-ed recriminations as to the Prime Minister’s ineptitude or worseHis blatant funneling of government funds appropriated for fire tankers and a “super” 747To settlements, instead of learningfrom the last catastrophe…Israel burnsOn Thanksgiving,She burns like those forests in California and OregonBut here it is blamed on terrorists,arsonist with political motiveIf you can’t beat the army, or terrorize the civilian populationBurn the land you love!Everything here is imputed to motive.Israel burnsOn Thanksgiving,The flames are familiarFrom the Second Temple and TitusTo the burnings in Mainz Speyer and WormsAnd the villages of GalitziaChmielniki,The Witches of SalemJesse Washington (Waco 1916)From the flamethrowers of WWI that terrorized teenage soldiers in the trenchesAnd the cyclone-B corpsesThe towns of Dresden and Tokyo(Both sides use flames)ISIS burnings in a cageThose girls who refused them sexWe are so outraged by the social media coverageBrought to our smart phonesBut nothing has changed.Flames no longer contained in Hephaestus’ hearth,No longer a smith for weapons of warNow loosened by his impotence(He too was rejected by his mother)Israel burns on ThanksgivingBecause of the unique wind pattern and humidityA freak of naturethe scientists tell usBut then nature is changingAnd the world is warmingAnd the President elect refuses to believe scienceThis fire of rageTrump supporters beating up free speech advocatesHe winks and nods and looks awayThe fire of the storm troopersThe burning of Kristallnacht booksIs only a generation awayThe civility of Adenauer’s Europe is over.Israel burns on ThanksgivingAnd a piece of us burns insideIn impotenceIn rageThe fire in Chernobyl never diedThe cooling towers of Fukushima DaiichiCannot copeThe coolness of critical thought is insufficientTo put these fires outThey must burn until there is no fuel left.Our prophet left us last weekHis words seem eerily manifest.
