WEBVTT

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This is a poem, obviously
somewhat related to that one.

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Written after the
massacres in Lebanon.

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And it's called
"Perhaps no poem,

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but all I can say and
I cannot be silent."

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And it is in a particular kind
of way a very autobiographical

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poem, because it refers to my
rather unusual mixed ancestry.

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My father having been from
a Hasidic-Jewish family who,

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at an early age, read
the New Testament when

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he was about 19 or so.

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And became convinced
that Jesus was a Messiah.

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I remained very proud of being
a Jew, but I was a Christian.

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And by the time I was born,
he was an Anglican priest

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in England.

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My mother was Welsh.

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So "Perhaps no poem, but all
I can say and I cannot be

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silent."

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As a devout Christian, my father
took delight and pride in being

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(like Christ and
the apostles) a Jew.

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It was Hasidic
lore, his heritage,

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he drew on to know the
Holy Spirit as shekhinah.

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My Gentile mother, Welsh through
and through, and like my father

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sustained by deep faith,
cherished all her long life

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the words of Israel
Zangwill who told her:

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you have a Jewish soul.

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I, their daughter,
flesh of their flesh,

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bone of their bone,
writing in this age

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of terror, a libretto about
El Salvador, the suffering,

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the martyrs,

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look from my page to watch
the apportioned news--

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those foul dollops of history,
each day thrusts at us

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pushing them into our gullet--

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And see, that, in Lebanon,
so-called Jews have permitted

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so-called Christians to wreak
pogrom, thunder of devastation,

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on helpless folk of a tribe
anciently kin to their own,

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and now concentrated in camps.

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My father, my mother,
I have longed for you.

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Now, I see, it is
well you are dead.

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Dead and gone from time,
gone from this time

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whose weight of shame
your bones, weary already

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from your own days and
years of tragic history,

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could surely not have borne.

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[APPLAUSE]

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