Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, GOD IN EUROPE, by URI ZVI GREENBERG


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

GOD IN EUROPE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: We were not like dogs among the gentiles ... They pity a dog
Alternate Author Name(s): Greenberg, Uritsvi
Subject(s): Jews; Mysticism - Judaism; Judaism


We were not like dogs among the Gentiles . . . they pity a dog,
They pet him, even kiss him with the Gentile mouth.
Like a fat baby, one of their very own,
They pamper him, always laughing and playing;
And when the dog dies, how bitterly the Gentiles mourn him!

We were not brought in boxcars like lambs to the slaughter,
Rather, like leprous sheep,
Through all the beautiful landscapes of Europe,
They shipped us to Death.
They did not handle their sheep as they handled our bodies;
They did not yank out their teeth before they killed them;
Nor strip the wool from their bodies as they stripped our skin;
Nor shovel them into the fire to make ashes of their life,
And scatter the ashes over streams and sewers.

Where are there other analogies to this,
This monstrous thing we suffered at their hands?
There are none -- no other analogies! (All words are shadows of
shadows) --
That is the horror: no other analogies!
No matter how brutal the torture a man may endure in a Christian country,
He who comes to compare will compare it thus:
He was tortured like a Jew.
Every fear, every anguish, every loneliness, every agony,
Every scream, every weeping in this world,
He who compares things will say:
This is the Jewish kind.

There is no retribution for what they did to us --
Its circumference is the world:
The culture of Christian kingdoms to its peak
Is covered with our blood,
And all their conscience, with our tears.


Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA
98368-0271, www.cc.press.org




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