Pink Triangle

(To the memory of all those souls incinerated in the Holocaust.  May we remember and cherish their humanity, together with our own)

I try to remember
Our humanity
Which once decorated the sky
With Shabbat candles
The soul
Flickering, flickering, flickering

I try to remain constant
In my love for Hashem
Lingering, lingering, lingering
But where were You?
Where were You
When the night fell upon us
Like bricks
Stamping, stamping, stamping

Kristallnacht
Burned bright into our memory
And where was Your humanity then
O Hashem
Who made us chosen
And then chose us for
Extermination

Broken glass
So many shattered lives
The Shabbat candles
Would never burn, never burn
Never burn

He held my hand
Still  warm with sweat
Lips that had prayed
Had kissed
Had tasted
The forbidden fruit

This, Hashem
Is finer than Your justice
For wherever You are
Life cannot be good
Never good, never good

Your silence, deafeningly loud
Was the answer to our enemies
And that silence was the sentence
Of our death

Come now
The black, white and red
Stretching your talons
To the four points
Of the compass
Hurling starved and broken bodies
To the four points of the globe
Come power, constant
Religious in its irreligious fervor
Casting a stone, a stone
A stone

Take me away
From his body
This forbidden knowledge
You fear as degenerate
But feel not so secure
So self-righteous, so indignant
For this too can happen
To you, to you, to you

My love
Denounced by the black, white and red
Becomes a pink triangle
Laughing at me
From the hole in my heart
This grants them a prison
To lock us away, away, away

Cattle cars are for cattle
And what are we now?
Under Kristallnacht's skies
Where glass is cutting, cutting, cutting
The fires of Shabbat candles
No longer burn still
And their eyes have been blinded
By their own fists

Think not for a moment
That you and yours
Are safe, are free
For what happened to us
Can happen to you, to you
To you

Take my heart, and his
And around it wrap a wire
Whose barbs and electric smile
Conceal the promise of annihilation
Let the fences shut us in
And let love die
One bright and yellow star
At a time

What light shines
In the terror of the frozen nights
But the fires of chimneys
Sinister synagogues
Replacing the warmth of my home
In your bed

Bed, your degenerate bed
Within whose white sheets
I found the purity of humanity
Loving only for its own sake
Giving pleasure more natural
Than the dawn's certain light
Now gone, gone, gone

And the fires
Work night and day
Casting a dance of ash
Swirling humanity upon a breeze
Blowing them all away, away
Away

The chimneys haunt the grey sky
Where once Hashem reigned
And who has power now?
Not Your good word
Not Your Shabbat candles
Not Your Torah
Not the nations You founded
For the eagle has clutched them
All in its talons
A fight to the death
Without mercy, mercy
Mercy

In their place
The skies burn
Churning out ashes
In the place of the stars
Whose lights we may
Never behold again

How many men can you burn
How many Jews can light
The sky by day and by night
Dark or light
The chimneys burn

Auschwitz burns
Birkenau burns
Chelmo and Belzek burn
Sobibor burns
Treblinka burns

The human heart burns
Faith burns
And Hashem Himself
Burns, burns, burns

Our purification has been
A trial by fire
Our spirit
Our humanity
Our dignity
Are gone, humankind incinerated
Love consumed
The black and the white and the red
Cast their eagle's shadow
Over the burning, stinking fields

How many souls can you burn
Burn, burn

I try to remember
Their humanity
That their pleasure and laughter
And pain
Was equal to mine
They prayed beneath the same sky
They loved the life I loved
They breathed the air
We breathed
What difference was there
Between us?

We try to remember
What it was like
To feel humanity
Between us
To light the Shabbat candles
From one to the other
Do we still carry the Light
That men pass between their souls
Even though the darkest night
Has transfixed us
And we are now marked forever

We must remember
Our humanity
That the air we breathe
Is the same air
That the love we feel 
Between us
Is the same love
That the light we pass
Between us
Is the same light
That daylight shines equally
Upon us
What difference is there
Between us?