Shema

by Primo Levi

You who live secure
In your warm houses
Who return at evening to find
Hot food and friendly faces:

Consider whether this is a man,
Who labours in the mud
Who knows no peace
Who fights for a crust of bread
Who dies at a yes or a no.
Consider whether this is a woman,
Without hair or name
With no more strength to remember
Eyes empty and womb cold
As a frog in winter.

Consider that this has been:
I commend these words to you.
Engrave them on your hearts
When you are in your house, when you walk on your way,
When you go to bed, when you rise.
Repeat them to your children.
Or may your house crumble,
Disease render you powerless,
Your offspring avert their faces from you.

***

Primo Levi, an Italian Jew, was a concentration camp survivor, who became famous with his autobiographical book, If This is a Man.  Haunted by the fact that he’d somehow survived Auschwitz, while many he believed better than himself did not, he tragically committed suicide in 1987 at the age of sixty-seven.

I thought it was time for another PSOetry entry, as it had been a while.  Thanks to PQS, who’d sent me this quite a while back.  This is kinda-sorta a special entry for my dear and sweet Jewish callers who generously give me their time and attention, and teach me so much with their indubitable wisdom and humble majesty. 

Read more about Primo Levi:  HERE and HERE and HERE

An explanation of the word, Shema

xo, Angela