Eichah?

Author’s Note: This is a “found” poem that recontextualizes text from Eichah (Lamentations), which is read on Tisha B’Av (a Jewish day of mourning for the destruction of the two Temples). I collaged and re-punctuated lines from Chapters 2-5 of Eichah and wove in some original imagery to speak to one person’s modern lamentations.

To what can I compare you to console you, Daughter of Zion?
for your suffering is as vast as the sea;

who can heal you?

Is this the city that was called Perfect in Beauty, Joy of all the Earth?

The tongue cleaves to palate for thirst;
young children within plead for bread;

no one extends it to them.

The desires of youth go unanswered in your streets,
even as your skin shrivels on your bones, becoming dry as wood.

Pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord!
Lift up your hands for the life of your infants

who faint from hunger at every street corner.

The rod of your inward wrath drives you
on and on in unrelieved darkness.
Your blind wander through the streets, defiled with blood

so that none will touch their garments.

Remember, pray, what has befallen us; look and see our disgrace.

Who has worn away your flesh and skin?
Who has broken your bones?
Who decided to place you in darkness like the eternally dead?
To wall you in, distort your path with hewn stones and thorns?
There may have been those who weighted your chains, yet
Only you, only you filled yourself with bitterness,

with wormwood, convinced yourself sated.

You ground your teeth on gravel, cowered shamefully in ashes.
Your skin was scorched like an oven, with the fever of famine.
It’s no wonder your soul has despaired of having peace, forgotten goodness;

lost is your strength and expectation from God.

Wall of Daughter of Zion, shed tears like a torrent day and night!
Give yourself no respite, your eyes no rest.
Remember your afflictions and sorrow;

the wormwood and bitterness.

Fight despondency; yearn for salvation.
For you said, in a moment of clarity,
More fortunate were those slain by the sword

than those slain by famine,

for they pine away,
stricken.

It was only that you heeded oracles of vanity and deception
and did not believe that the adversary could come

from within your gates.

Your eyes still strained in vain for deliverance;
you watched for an outside nation that could not save

a city caving in on itself.

Your eye shall flow and will not cease,
cleansing and coursing, ‘til you stand across from God.
Despite the rumblings in your streets,
This is not your day to die.
It is good to bear a yoke in one’s youth,

So that she may learn the value of her own life.
So that she will learn to protect it.
So that she will never again let her gold be dimmed,

nor her sacred gemstones scatter in the streets

It is good to pray for divine salvation;
‘The Lord is my portion,’ says your soul, ‘therefore I have hope.’
But do not discount:
You are your own inheritance on this earth, yours to fight for.