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Mama Mada
Jews
by Yvo nne Green
We’re neither poems for you to fetishise
Nor emblems of the murdered of the twentieth century,
We don’t hold all possibilities in our Talmudic minds
Live burdened with the grief you want us to.
We’re not the monsters of the Middle East,
The devils of the diaspora, nor do we know
The selves we recognise in one another.
We’re in danger in your midst
And where you don’t know us,
A barometer of your pasts and futures
That you never consult,
And yet we ourselves live
By the tremble of mercury
Which we always ask ourselves to shape,
For which we’re quoted against ourselves.
There’s no monopoly of suffering,
What did the first victims know
Whose parents sent them with wobbly legs,
Gaped mouths, vacant grins, rage? The evidence
Of the trial they were to heart, hands, purse;
Yes, look I’m a Jew and I’ve said purse,
Judge me if you want; the first victims
Were piped away like Hamlyn’s children,
Only before the rats and other vermin.
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