Best Shema Poems

The milky morning’s Saturn haze
Haloed the sun’s neonate phase
Seize the warmth, Hail to The Light!
No waspish thoughts to sting nor bite
this soft and cheerful face.

Shades to shadows stir and shift
saddened loss is set adrift
Kissed by the morn, cajoled, embraced 
To block the sun is vacuumed...

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Shema ("Listen")
by Primo Levi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You who live secure
in your comfortable homes,
who return each evening to find
warm food and a hearty welcome ...

Consider: is this a "man"
who slogs through the mud,
who knows no peace,
who fights for scraps of bread,
who lives at another...

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There is a bench
Under the Tree of Life
...no meaning
There is a church
Ringing a bell, at the end
...no salvation
There is a dorm
Waiting to be filled
...no companion
There is a grand library
Angels take me to the high place
...no enemy
There is a book
Golden, connecting to my core
...no lies
LOVE stands...

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You have failed to properly bury your dead.
Your heroes and martyrs lie instead 
In shallow graves and trenches
Where the stench of their decay 
Is overpowering.
As you walk towards your purpose, 
your feet sink into the rotting corpses.
Your progress is halted while you wallow in their...

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