Kristallnacht

The present poem recounts the horrible events of that nightmare of a night in a quasi-delirious, almost hallucinatory fashion. The brackets designate those moments when the observer pauses the narrative to loudly protest the painful scenes, which are taking place before the eyes.

Kristallnacht
The Night of the Broken Glass

Behold!

Watch over the mothers!

Behold!

Watch over the mother,

Whose fear-poisoned breast

Is feeding bitter milk

Into the mouth of the startled child.

[Alas,

Sacrilege and lunacy

Harden daggers

In the acerbity of blood.]

Behold!

Watch over the newborns

—These fragile hopes of a better tomorrow;

Watch over them, please,

For the sake of God;

His Will was never meant

To cleanse the temple’s altar

By the ablution of the virgins’ blood.

[This is no more

The scent of the incense,

Or the fragrance of the oudh,

Which passes now,

On the wings of the wind,

Over the dark alleys of the night.]

*

Then,

Through the long fear of the mortiferous night,

We saw

The ignorance-tainted blindness of contempt

—That onset

Of the return

Of the slaughter, the crime—

So vividly, in our sight;

And we listened

’Til the jubilant cries of the drunkards

Merged with those supplicant pleas

That asked in tears,

“I beg thy forgiveness,

Oh, Thou, the Almighty God…”

*

And why,

At this autumn night,

When deciduous trees shed leaves,

There sprang, everywhere,

Red poppies, these flowers of love,

From the faint cold of the soil;

There bloomed red poppies,

From the callous heart

Of history’s

Stone-paved road.

*

Look!

Look, now!

Look!

Look, how

The ghosts of shrouded holy men

Are saving Jehovah’s name

—Which shineth brightly whence

The columns of the holy scrolls—

From the raging fire of hatred’s flames.

[This deceitful light of the fire

At the heart of this pitch-black dark

Couldn’t have ever been taken

As the glowing rays of

Shechina2—God’s Holy Light.]

*

Canst thou hear

The dreadful wail

Of the shofar3, crying

From the hilltops of Gilead?

*

These corps after corps of the ghosts,

Are the wandering souls,

Who’ve lost their graves,

Even as themselves

Were once victims—

These white-clad crowd,

Who’ve now risen

From the ruins

Of the unmarked tombs

Of centuries past.

[Perhaps

The rebel martyrs of bygone ages,

At last,

The roar of their cries

Would stir

The colossal heart of God.]

*

And at long last,

The trace of the crimson thread

Joins now

The frigid cold of the gates of a heart

Devoid of the grace of love’s shining light,

A heart, itself

Forever drowned

In the ice-melt of its own blood.

*

But may the hands

Of the vicious hangmen

Forever be

Heavy with pain,

Who by the slingshot of their fists

—Filled with the fossils of ancient hate—

Broke down,

So sudden,

That night,

The silence

Of the crystal of kindness

Off of the blue calm

Of heaven’s dome.

*

Nay,

This is no more

The scent of the incense,

Or the fragrance of the oudh,

Which passes now,

On the wings of the wind,

Over the dark alleys of the night…

Jahangir Sedaghatfar
Tiburon, November 1997

English translation: Los Angeles
November 2008, Payman Akhlaghi

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