I was reminded this morning gone that yesterday (our time) was the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau9 and hence too Holocaust Day) as I accidentally tuned Radio 4 to long wave instead of FM and got the slot that is the 09.45 switch to the Christian Morning Service which was, because of the day, given over to a rabbi leading, with support, in Hebrew and English, a 15 minute meditation on the holocaust. Suffice it to say I was moved to tears.
I hit this by accident because I was busy checking over material for my projected next book: checking over material because a slow coastline fog of realisation had crept over me that I should stop being so cavalier about things, that at almost 51 I am not going to live for ever, attested adolescent though I may be. And I came across a poem, as too I needed something for a read-around/nibbles-and-wine/poetry-social on the night.
It's based on Umberto Saba, not a literal translation but I hope not distorting the original.:
here we go (Dave) -
The Goat
(after Umberto Saba)
I dreamt I'd spent my life
talking to a goat. A goat alone
in a mud field, tethered.
Soaked in the grass, soused
with ceaseless rain,
bleating.
Bleating to the pulse
of grief. I answered her,
sour at the start, but then because
grief's voice is common,
companionable,
and one.
I heard that voice
in the sorrow of a single goat.
A goat with a Jewish face,
reciting the toneless torah
of all other ills, all other
lives' laments.
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