THE JEWISH CEMETERY IN PANDELYS, LITHUANIA

In this small village where my father's family
Lived for three centuries, there are no Jews,
No synagogue, only a cemetery--
Appropriate memorial, it seems,
To a community that now has vanished.
The graves, though undisturbed, are overgrown
With weeds, the gravestones battered by Time's hand,
The Hebrew lettering of an inscription
Tells an uncomprehending world that here
Lies Yankev-Yehudah, son of Yitzhak, died
In 1927 (my great-grandfather,
He lived to be a hundred and one years old),
And other stones bear names of relatives
Who lived and died in this quiet backwater,
All laid to rest in the Lithuanian soil
That gave them birth. The mourners long ago
Dispersed, the tears dried up, the prayers fell silent;
The pious community that fed with deaths
The cemetery has been totally
Wiped out and lies in mass graves in the forest.
There are no living Jews now in Pandelys:
Only the dead remain, like seeds beneath
The frozen winter ground, waiting for spring
To bring the trumpet-blast of Resurrection.

 

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