Identity card

Judaism, Summer-Fall, 2003 by Eli Netzer

All my dead my grandfather my father and the others
edged me forward towards my life.
I was the sum of their hope.
I am their last.
They told me, Go on--
my grandfather with his blackened beard
my father whose breathing became labored by the end of the run
and the others whose keening became my hymns of joy.
I want to return to them
I am returning to them
I shall return.
They're examining me--
What are all these silences if not they
What are all these voices if not theirs
And what am I of not of them.
Translated from Hebrew by Bernhard Frank

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