Six Hostages

Ori Danino, Carmel Gat, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi, and so many others, too many others, too many mourners.

Again, we grieve
	we have grieved since
		and since
	and we grieve again.

Almost a year
	or nearly a decade
	or is this just what
		Jews learn to do?

Our rituals, the
	therapeutic specialists
	have told me,
	are quite cathartic,
	salutary, healthy.
As if grief of this sort
	can ever be healthy.
Our rituals, the
	specialist say,
	note in full,
	expose boldly
Our grief.

As if, as if, such 
	notes and such
	exposures
	alleviate the grief
	we Jews carry
	year to year,
	decade to decade
	lifetime to lifetime.

We had made a wager
	that a state would
	make us like 
	the other nations.

Whether fate, or history, or stubbornness,
	or Divine plan,
	or God Himself, 
	we are not like the other nations.

All mothers grieve their dead children.
	It seems though that our mothers
	have had 
	far too much practice.

We grieve again.  We might rage too.
	But we grieve again.
		And in the course of 
			our grief:

Blessed is the True Judge.
Increase, Enlarge, Bless, Sanctify
	His Great Name,
In the world which He created and 
In which
We grieve.