For over twenty years my soul I wrought
Upon the anvil sacred to the Jew;
An actor in God’s drama truly caught:
No mere aloof observer of the view.
Indeed, in one scant quarter century,
Amongst the toughest nation on the earth,
I lived four thousand years of history
In which the spirit knew more gloom than mirth.
To grasp such tragic fate, I had to write –
A fertile source of anguish on its own;
No publisher for free would see the light,
And thus the more I felt myself alone.
But, thanks to him to whom this verse I send,
At last my exile may have reached its end.
Jerusalem
24 June 1994