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Michael R Burch Mar 2020
Holocaust Poem: "On The Slaughter"
by Chaim Nachman Bialik
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Merciful heavens, have pity on me!
If there is a God approachable by men
as yet I have not found him—
Pray for me!

For my heart is dead,
prayers languish upon my tongue;
my right hand has lost its strength
and my hope has wilted, undone.

How long? Oh, when will this nightmare end?
How long? Hangman, traitor,
here’s my neck—
rise up now, rise and slaughter!

Behead me like a dog—your arm controls the axe
and the whole world is a scaffold to me
although we—the chosen few—
were once recipients of the Pacts.

Executioner, my blood’s a paltry prize—
strike my skull and the blood of innocents will rain
drenching your pristine uniform again and again,
staining your raiment forever.

If there is Justice—quick, let her appear!
But after I’ve been blotted out, should she reveal her face,
let her false scales be overturned forever
and the heavens reek with the stench of her disgrace.

You too arrogant men, with your brutal injustice,
suckled on blood, unweaned of violence:
cursed be the warrior who cries "Vengeance!" on a maiden;
such cruelty was never contemplated, even by Satan.

Let innocents’ blood drench the abyss!
Let innocents’ blood seep down into the congealing darkness,
eat it away and undermine
earth's rotting foundations.

Al Hashechita ("On the Slaughter") was written by Chaim Nachman Bialik in response to the ****** Kishniev pogrom of 1903, which was instigated by agents of the Czar who wanted to divert social unrest and political anger from the Czar to the Jewish minority. The Hebrew word schechita (also transliterated shechita, shechitah, shekhitah, shehita) denotes the ritual kosher slaughtering of animals for food. The juxtapositioning of kosher slaughter with the slaughter of Jews makes the poem all the more powerful and ghastly. Such anti-Semitic incidents prompted a massive wave of Eastern European emigration that brought millions of Jews to the West. Unfortunately, there have been many similar slaughters in human history and the poem remains chillingly relevant to the more recent ones in Israel/Palestine, Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo. Keywords/Tags: Holocaust, poem, Bialik, translation, slaughter, massacre, God, prayer, executioner, hangman, blood, innocents, justice, false, scales, injustice
Down to the wire, before this
calendrical occasion doth expire,
though arbitrary twenty four hour
time set aside for guide
ding hand of the supposed/purported
fairer gender, yet human race, yet hide
bound male oriented (patriarchal) must
relinquish reigns of power and egoistic pride!

Survival of species mandates, er...
woman warrants segue way into an opportune
winning moment for matriarchy,
idea leaning in with my paunch
just now while sitting on me
*** issuing flatulence,
while poised on haunch,

this grand scheme to shift "mother"
paradigm as kickstarter platform
global campaign best Gaia hood launch
(without no ifs, ands,
nor buts) to staunch
******, brutish, nasty...
warlords indiscriminate ******

apparently linkedin with machismo
animal, banal, carnal
activity...in  apropos
for those supposed
"men at work" dough
boys in many industries

hesitant to allow
management to incorporate
diversity and flow
with admixture to
tone down militaristic
stance heavily saturating
gunning product endorsements

sans, toys for tots miniature
weapons bought as a la carte,
bons with child size meal,
some ideally meant to spark
vitiate, unleash, trigger, spur
rapidly snarling tussling among
yips and playful puppy like bark


aggressive competitive purchasers
devices snapped up on a lark,
that ravenously mesmerize,
glow with a Noah ville paginated arc
predominantly helping boys shine
lasers to find their way in the dark,

these "FAKE" trappings priming
gun toting mindset at crucial stark
age to inculcate impressionable
embryonic seeded inquisitiveness
sophisticated electronic goodies, sans quark
thought processes, advertisers nudging

with everlasting lifelong indelible mark
steering stereotype cast gender bias
buzzfeeding future enlistees, earmark
kings military industrial complex edifice
for tomorrow's psychologically finagled
jackknifed, psyched...indoctrinated trademark

most likely completely
overhauled with able
bodied, confidant, daring...
females at the helm,
who would quickly disable,
where future teeters on

the brink of apocalypse,
rousing the ghost of lovely legs
Elizabeth Ruth "Betty" Grable,
whar fight'n World War II boys
gabled analogous to din heard
in tower of Babel,

yet upon understood signal din silenced,
when esteemed goddess took to podium with great
******* up pomp (albeit modest) and circumstance,
where clamoring would immediately abate
revered hand of Lady Liberty look alike incarnate
her majestic poetical, quintessential, regal...aura
charisma, karma...did automatically infiltrate
(synonymous with some catatonic, hypnotic tonic...

inducing meow wing spell), where her intrepid
essential unbesmirched virtue did actuate
magical mystery tour de force augmenting
win-win conflict resolution unanimously,

this mantra, she would strive mode to administrate
dethroning entrenched fruitless governments
honoring integrating, juxtapositioning...
for human beings (with other life forms) to propagate
amity, ethnicity, integrity, magnanimity to coordinate!
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2020
.something akin to... a reminiscence of the opening scene of vanilla sky... i can't imagine the amount of effort and co-ordination it took... back then... to completely empty time sq. well... now i sort-of can... of note: for every # there should have been a chinese "character" in its place... i can't seem to inject them... but they are available at allpoetry (//bit.ly/3bopkJr) and deepundergroundpoetry (//bit.ly/2ywqzaS)... however tedious, this pickles (me, nontheless)...

pettitoes... when dickens isn't being a samvel veller...
         tatties: neeps 'n' 'aggis...
pettitoes: petite toes...
   bicameral mind - manhattan -
a man in a hat... (julian jaynes)
      yes.... but a little detail: not invoked:
a man with a tan wearing a hat...

otherwise... it would be most respectable to call:
ginger: the root...
             but... the keratin colour
of... the nails that become hair...
well:
              ginja... ninja...
                   digging trenches and
pig troughs of mass graves for... the... "laughter"?

       ginj'ah ninj'ahs...
             ***** hair... worn best
on the face of a man as...
                well... bypassing the whole
affair of ******* and presenting
                                                   the sinless adam...

needless to say: "once upon a time"...
victorian english... the "H" was yet to be a surd...
       one would find: ha'    instead
of             'ad...
              for the term: had aye: yes:
punctured weaving cruxes
with an i, i would have... 'ave...
   if that wasn't too straining to begin with
                         concerning the roman salute...

then again... 'ave i any concerns for:
áve or avé?!

the mountain (#) and the Ш (shuckles) or... Щ
                             (sh'   'itty          cheese)...
       this prime logogram...
the skeleton of mandarin...
                         or perhaps: hardly...
then the 2nd tier...
the ideograms and the "abstract"...
i guess # is very much "up"...
             as # is very much "down"...
as is... copernican north and a copernican south...
yep... up there on the moon...
what is the heliocentric "north"?

         funny... though...
                   didn't Tyr leave a simpler "abstract"
of "up" with the rune letter:           ᛏ           ?
   otherwise being pulled apart:
                           ᛨ:   up (ᛉ) and down (ᛦ)
   huh?! what's this doing 'ere (ɻ)?
                and of course... the much more crude
variation of pst! Ψ: poseidon was 'ere too!

does this look like anything concerning knives?
                      #?
now i'd ask... drop an adjective:
                       blunt into the whole
affair...     because? well... # is but a blade...
   if i were to find a difference between
a     sharp #          and a blunt #...
               (# = knife) i'd be all the happier!

this is a person: #... well...
     this # is a mountain?
       how rare are... lonely mountains...
   akin to fuji?
                         i see a mountain i see a volvano...
yes... last time i checked: a lonely mountain
is a volcano... mountain tend to huddle...
volcanos stand alone...
             so... is # a mountain?
and # is a tree?
          i find the abstraction at fault...
this is a forest of pines: |||||||||||
                                             ||||||||
                                            |||||||||| at length
even birches... but isn't a tree as simple
as Y? or how that's also the tongue of
a serpent?          oh, to be sure...
                               #... rest... leaning against a tree?
                   how's                  /Y?
                               what a funky lookin' tree
the chinese have abstracted... #: i'm guessing it's
a bonsai... which would make leaning against
it... almost impossible!
   of the crux of the matter:
            isn't the greek and latin version of tree: Y
bare more similarity than the chinese "abstract" #?

yes oh yes: geniuses of the orient...
          squint hard and lon enough
you'll bound to see... the sort of punishment
they devised for dunces...
counting 100 grains of uncooked rice using
chop-sticks from one pile into another!
   to build a wall to encompass the reiteration
of a mountain range...
because when Hannibal crossed the alps...
no elephants fell off the crevices of the trial...
Xerxes also whipped the sea:
which i'll take quiet literally...
      because that thing was common...
to not associate a bridge with... instead...
      Nebuchadnezzar...
cuckoo worship of persian leaders...

     H was actually devised to be employed
as a rugby post / goal...
          yep... all along it was hatched as a plan
for the game of rugby...
never to be a surd...
of the abstract of a clown juggling
while riding a unicycle -
  because H was never about the juggling
of vowels when expressing...
that very base origin of:
how the vowels needed a letter to attach
themselves when one should
               be better laugh... ah ha ha ha...

continued - with great volubility -
alt: with vehemence...
but no... pluck a feather...
   indeed... a crow's feather landing in
my garden... an omen like any other...

   this is (#)  both a nose and a self...
      and thank the dog's ******* and monkey chins
that it more or less implies the latter more...
perhaps... self... no: not combinatoriality...
a self is like a set of drawers... a cupboard...
conveniently... segregated into rows...
socks tier 1, t-shirts tier 2...
        
and as ever... looking for a word...
a googlewhack: compentralized
                     (tinyurlcom/y8dc7ckl)...
assorted... fitting the designated volume
of space...

hell... what good is an algorithm search engine...
when one really rather desires
the alphabetic route... and looking through
the list of the prefix comp-
                                         ?    ?
                                         ?    ?

eh! easy! compare... comparison...
    compartment!

             com-par-tmen-talize!
com-part-mental!
  this word would do better with a german tweak...
to escape the ******* and vagabon father
  (z and s respectively)... i.e. compartmentaliße!

sometimes the mind does wander...
better for me: i always found crossword puzzles
more entertaining as a double-act...
than any gratifying escape into solipsistic adventures...
of the: horizons of the self-assured reason...
whether pure... impure or...

           tancticum: philosophia polingano ad normam
               burgundicae
                             Eusebius Amort (1730 a.d.)
          tinyurlcom/yakfgo62 - close... googlewhack...

was this rushed? i don't think so...
too many juxtapositioning to arrange...
perhaps this should have the alt. title of:
   a phonetic assault on the "middle kingdom"?
would one call the telegraph - rushed?
  i'd be most likely to forgive myself
by conjuring up the adjective: telegraphic to suit
this... congestion.

— The End —