“Let the Memorial Hill Remember” has been one of my favorite poems for over 20 years but I’ve never felt it so acutely as today, down to my marrow. It feels so true to me now, except for the fact that their bodies are not dust. At all. This isn’t about the Holocaust from the 1940s, something we’ve been taught we must remember for the sake of our people. Something intentional.
These bones are still freshly dead. All these people were alive a year and a day ago. I could not ever forget them if I wanted. They are all burned into my memory.
I don’t know how to hold this much weariness. I want to stay in bed all day and ignore all the commemorative posts and ceremonies. I loved this poem partly because I found it remarkable how inured to our most important mourning and memorials he was that he just couldn’t do it anymore. I never imagined I’d feel exactly as he did one day. I wasn’t that kind of person.
I don’t want to post that today is the one-year anniversary of our worst day since I have been alive.
I never imagined I’d want to turn the memory off and have a day of quiet and sleep instead of struggle and constant memorial.
Now that is one of the things I want the most. I don’t know what kind of person that makes me today. A tired one, I suppose. One who knows we are not even close to being done with this.
How are the hostages still gone and already we are commemorating a whole year? Nothing is resolved. Anniversaries and memorials are supposed to be for things that are behind us.
How can we possibly step forward to the future when we are so trapped in the present and the past? How can we possibly rest? How can we do anything but remember it, live it, every single day?
“Let the Memorial Hill Remember”
by Yehuda Amichai
שהר הזיכרון יזכור במקומי
זה תפקידו. שהגן לזכר יזכר
שהרחוב על שם יזכר
שהבניין בידוע יזכר
שבית בתפילה על שם אלוהים יזכר
שספר התורה המתגלגל יזכר
שהיזכור יזכר. שהדגלים יזכרו
התכריכים הצבעוניים של ההיסטוריה אשר
הגופים שעטפו הפכו אבק. שהאבק יזכור
שהאשפה תזכר בשער. שהשליה תזכור
שחית השדה ועוף השמים יאכלו ויזכו
שכולם יזכרו כדי שאוכל לנוח
Let the memorial hill remember instead of me:
that’s what it’s here for. Let the park-in-memory-of remember,
let the street-that’s-named-for remember,
let the well-known building remember,
let the synagogue that’s named after God remember,
let the rolling Torah scroll remember,
let the prayer for the memory of the dead remember. Let the flags remember,
those multicolored shrouds of history: the bodies they wrapped
have long since turned to dust. Let the dust remember.
Let the dung remember at the gate. Let the afterbirth remember.
Let the beasts of the field and birds of the heavens eat and remember.
Let all of them remember so that I can rest.
