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Kaddish
by Ed Bennett

How do I begin to praise the Divine
at this altar of twisted metal,
the gate of hell thrown open by
the serpent that struck, ravenous,
on a warm Tuesday morning?

Our pride, naivety, eternity caught
in the grip of a steel frame rising,
a new colossus by the rivers
where we were together in the glory,
a blind eye to the past, a nod to the future

Until the day you fell,
a comet in a fractured firmament,
to the burning furnace of
jet fuel exploding against a glass tower
absenting love and all of its’ illusions.

And every day this prayer
to see you through the smoke
alive, beatific in your deliverance,
your love a river to cool the flame,
fill this pit with a belated miracle.

Jahrzeit passes, passes again with
prayers stumbling from my gentile lips,
my obligation to one of thousands,
a burden of your beliefs assumed,
as one last piety drawn from love.

The minions chant as one
for the memory of others – history’s victims;
I pray alone with the pain of my words
falling silently to the fissured granite
of an empty, hardened soul.

 

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