They cut your biography half-way,
didn’t let you complete it.
Maybe that is why I can’t manage
to sum you up in an elegy
Memory flutters –
a fish out of water
body, mind and soul trembling,
refusing to come together
under the poem’s stretcher
maybe also because now,
five days later, you haven’t yet
even been laid to rest
in the crumbly loess
after last rites.
There has been talk of a mass grave.
Actually, it could suit you
to be gathered unto your buddies,
you who were always the life of the party,
angel of bags of peanuts and crates of beer,
the angel of flowing talk.
Your eyes were always ready to aim
wide in wonder, a genial telescopic gaze
erasing any bit of distance.
In a thicker-than-blood Liverpool
kinship you were my lens,
my eyes at Kibbutz Nir Oz –
in our Uncle Meir’s home,
the coffee, yeast cake, cigars, and whisky,
the welder of copper birds and our blood.
Your camera ambled like a kibbutz dog
rising from its rest to greet a guest,
a rainbow fan in the desert,
June action:
two millimeters of rain
a video with a caption:
A very misty morning. You can hear
the heavy dew fall
and the light, easy birdsong.
Why did I wake up so early (September 29, 2023).
You were murdered in a mini-Auschwitz
in the northern Negev,
in your home, your castle you loved
with a bit of Jewish black humor:
A jubilant burnt sacrifice
on the Festival of Rejoicing in the Law,
punning on mercy in your last post.
You look surprised that a poem
was written about you. Know:
In the world to come,
you‘ll never walk alone.
