To my sisters and brothers

Poem by Harvey Gillman

As a child I was taught that the Russians and the Ukrainians had a long history of persecuting the Jews. My ancestors were refugees from Lithuania, My heart bleeds for the people of Ukraine and their supporters in Russia. And for the peoples of Palestine and Israel. For the persecuted and their persecutors.

As a child I was taught whom to love,
and, if not love, whom I must learn to hate,
at least to fear. They were kind the older ones.
They wanted me to live at least in partial peace,
to survive a while on a bewildering earth.
They gave me bricks that throughout my life
I would learn to build large and wide and sturdy walls
and so have shelter from a lowering world.

But there were other worlds within my mind
so vast no walls could encompass. I had arms,
could reach beyond my childhood’s prison realm,
embrace a stranger and a stranger’s world,
could flee across the frontiers of a given name,
call the unknown my kin and yes be hurt,
be loved, but gaze upon no face with fear,

see no creature upon this earth my foe,
pull down the walls each place I go.

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Comments

Thank you for this, Harvey.
Your poetry always lifts the heart, takes us to a better inward place.
Barbara

By Barbara Windle on 10th March 2022 - 16:19

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