“I Am That I Am”

While
the Second World War, the one the Jewish people darkly to fire lost,
was raging,
it occurred.

I refer to,
if you didn’t realize,
the Holocaust,
the cause of which is blurred
by men who don’t admit its impetus was killing all the Jews,
a rationale that’s not
been obsoleted by those whom it’s not the fashion to accuse
of wishing that the plot
had been successful, and the Jews had vanished from the earth, instead
of fighting for a state
in wars where, unlike World War number Two, they can’t by foes be led
like sheep to slaughter.

Hate
of Jews that was a one rationale of World War Two
was not defeated,
as Jews were when like cattle
six million of them to their death were led. They won’t be obsoleted,
since heirs now fight the battle
that they could not while World War number Two was being fought, and they,
by allied forces spurned
since those self-same future winners of the war all looked away,
were shot and gassed and burned.

Nec tamen consumbatur, yet the bush was not consumed.
That’s why God said to Moses: “View
the fire,” implying even Jews condemned to burn would not be doomed,
mirabile dictu.
I hope that it’s not  blasphemous to parsingly presume
“I am that  I am,” the spell
God spoke to Moses in a fire the bush did not consume,
applies to Jews as well.

***

My poem is not just a consideration of the Holocaust but in response to Yehuda Amichai’s poem describing his relationship to the Second World War, quoted in “The Ethics of Protective Edge,” JRB, Fall, 2014:

“Even my loves are measured by wars…”:

I am saying this happened after the Second
World War. We met a day before the
Six-Day War. I’ll never say
before the peace ’45–’48 or during
the peace ’56–’67.

Nec tamen consumebatur is the motto of the Church of Scotland.

Gershon Hepner is a poet who has written over 25,000 poems on subjects ranging from music to literature, politics to Torah. He grew up in England and moved to Los Angeles in 1976. Using his varied interests and experiences, he has authored dozens of papers in medical and academic journals, and authored “Legal Friction: Law, Narrative, and Identity Politics in Biblical Israel.” He can be reached at gershonhepner@gmail.com.