Blame

God had nothing to do with Auschwitz.

I know that-you taught me, Levi, Primo Levi,

Master, master of suffering who wrote its primer.

God had nothing to do, you say, either,

with their fine retributions, years later

in Palestine, the bombings they inflict,

or the camps at Shatila and Sabra,

nor with gulags earlier, nor the present terror.

What's God served with? Death? Hunger?

He's as absent from your life when you're hungry

as when your stomach is full. Look, reader,

feed me. Don't send me hungry away from your door.

Let me not pray to you, beloved God,

when planes fly over and the children cry out

that their hair is on fire, and our eyes fill with ash.

Never before has there been such suffering,

they say, but it's ordinary. It was predictable.

Let me not pray to you when shadows turn bright

and stars vanish and silence cannot be heard,

so I may not insult you, Lord, so I may praise you, Maker.

MAIRI MACINNES' latest book of poems, The Girl I Left Behind Me, has just been published by Shoestring Press, Nottingham, England, together with her Clearances: A Memoir, first published in the U.S. by Pantheon in 2005. . . . .

Copyright Hudson Review Winter 2008
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