Peter Eliastam Poems

The searchlight of His star had led them far
Along the road to David’s Bethlehem.
The Child, knowing who His children are,
Gazed up in love and smiled to welcome them.
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My God! You hugged a Jew!
I can’t believe it God! You hugged a Jew!
My God! You hugged a Jew!
A poor pariah, hugely held in loving arms
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A pleasant garden bloomed below the hill
Beyond the temple at Jerusalem.
Contrasting with the cross-trees, gaunt and still,
Time’s ghoulish archetype of Yad vaShem.
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Smothered, the illusion manufactured
By a world of words, crackled into flame
On crumpled paper, scattering fractured
Fantasies, blackened by my dawn to shame.
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Another’s agony, a mother’s pain
Is all conjecture, an enclosed domain.
Words cling claustrophobic to the brain.
We sigh for language that can bear the strain.
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Shall we, this side of glory ever know
What each appointed trial here below
Accomplishes in us through chastening?
Love guards our crucibles, unhastening.
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And who could question or mistake the thing?
It felt as though a vagrant wind’s wing brushed
Our dormant senses to awakening
With terrible zeal, and zest of spice crushed.
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An easy target, shot at from the hip,
With sneer of scorn and curling of the lip.
Beyond accounting, tongue-lashed with a whip.
For this, it would appear, I have been born.
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Somewhere near the margin of our troubled mind
Your presence Lord, surpassing wonder, still surprises us.
We diffidently pause to ponder perfect love, whose cause
So alien to us, is far above our power to realise.
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To sense or sight, no hint of hope appears.
This solid night-long grieving liquefies
The dawn of yet another day to tears.
I lie bereft. Bereaving light denies
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