All My Life

(Written after a visit to the Jewish Museum Berlin at the Schalechet (fallen leaves) by Menashe Kadishman)

All my life

I’ve been walking towards my dead

And could never reach

The heights of the sky.

Hey, you Israeli wonderer

Go to the Jewish Museum

The museum that begins

At the wishing tree and

Ends in the valley of slaughter.

There,

In the valley of the dead,

In the Jewish museum of Berlin,

An unspoken memory is now forever present,

And its screeching poundings

Are carried to the heights of the skies.

There I heard

The wordless scream

In the shrieking silence.

And as I walked on the skulls of my dead,

All my life shattered inside me again.

From the wishing tree at the heights of the sky

To the shattering sound of the skulls in the void,

From the wordless scream

To the valley of the fallen leaves.

All my life

I’ve been walking towards my dead

But only now,

As I step on their skulls,

We have met.

Yair Palgi  September, 2005