"shema" poems
Shema (“Listen”)
by Primo Levi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
You who live secure
in your comfortable homes,
who return each evening to find
warm food and a hearty welcome ...
Consider: is this a “man”
who slogs through mud,
who has never known peace,
who fights for scraps of bread,
who lives at another man's whim,
who at his "yes" or "no" lies dead.
Consider: is this a “woman”
shorn bald and bereft of a name
because she lacks the strength to remember,
her eyes as void and her womb as frigid
as a winter frog's?
Consider that such horrors have indeed been!
I commend these words to you.
Engrave them in your hearts
when you lounge in your beds
and again when you rise,
when you venture outside.
Rehearse them to your children,
or may your houses softly crumble
and disease render you equally as humble
so that even your offspring avert their eyes.
Primo Michele Levi (1919-1987) was an Italian Jewish chemist, writer and Holocaust survivor. He was the author of two novels and several collections of short stories, essays, and poems, but is best known for If This Is a Man, his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. It has been described as one of the best books by one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. His unique work The Periodic Table was shortlisted as one of the greatest scientific books ever written, by the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Levi's autobiographical book about his liberation from Auschwitz, The Truce, became a movie with the same name in 1997. Keywords: Holocaust, poem, Italian, translation, man, mud, woman, bald, nameless, houses, homes, bread, eyes, womb, empty, void, frigid, lifeless, horror, horrors, hearts, write, etch, engrave, inscribe, children, offspring, disease, avert, reject
Mar 14, 2020
Mar 14, 2020 at 4:58 AM UTC
Shema Yisrael,
You are being deceived.
Shema Yisrael,
You are not free.
Shema Yisrael,
You let the media have control.
Shema Yisrael,
Fear is their only hold.
Shema Yisrael,
You don't have to live this way.
Shema Yisrael,
No institution of G-d or man,
Shema Yisrael,
hold control over your destiny.
Shema Yisrael,
We need change.
Shema Yisrael,
Rise.
Jun 5, 2011
Jun 5, 2011 at 6:28 PM UTC
I should realy give you a candy,
For every time our eyes meet.
I smile and you eat.
I should also read for you stories and look at you when you speak...
You come to me crying because someone told you
You dont fit
Ever so sensible your big brown eyes got wet so fast
But I told you've done good at your test.
So I hugg you and kiss your round cute face
It s okay sweety ...Now its time, say Shema and lets go,
And you of course tell me NO
Then you stop,and you listen and you go to bed.
Sweet dreams Reful I love you Good night.
Click bang ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Good night.
Apr 9, 2012
Apr 9, 2012 at 8:40 PM UTC
Israel, go ahead, time to go.
Shema.
There are no words
And there are not worlds...
Israel, sing a song,
Adonai must be blessed,
Time is coming.
Israel, there is a lot of pain,
My teeth are shaking
Like a bomb in Hiroshima,
Like an aborted foetus...
This world is aborted too
And there is no other place,
I see the holy city on fire,
In blasphemy, bitterly...
Time for exile?
May 12, 2021
May 12, 2021 at 6:05 PM UTC