Sitting Shmira Poem by Michael Salcman
Sitting Shmira
Outside the morgue on First
and Thirtieth street, a canopy
has been erected next to
three truck loads of mixed body parts.
Under the tent, teams of young
yeshiva girls
sit shmira, watching over the dead
in four hour shifts.
What should take only a day
has gone on for eight or nine weeks.
Since no one knows
who's in these trucks,
all the dead cops, candy vendors,
bond traders and unsuspecting passersby,
all the uncommon inhabitants
of our one earth's island
are assumed converted by fire and ash
into one Jew, one blood, and one flesh.
Since no one can be buried like this,
no one can be properly mourned.
But hour after hour, the sweet melodies
of psalms rise over the conversos
until a light is lit in David's garden,
a moon with a broken edge,
its author as anonymous as any victim.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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3/14/2026 2:17:34 AM # 1.0.0
