To Leah Rabin

Three shots and it’s all over –

Now one talks about him in the past tense.

Suddenly, the present becomes the past,

And the past is only a memory.

We are standing, crying,

We want to believe it never happened,

That it is all a nightmare,

And when we wake up the next morning – it will not be so.

Instead, we wake up to a warped reality,

Where pain is laced with hate.

We cannot digest the enormity of this loss,

And we cannot comprehend its severity.

How can we understand such a tragedy,

In a civilization and not in the jungle ?

Each one of us holds an opinion,

Yet, we do not have to agree.

We cannot turn the clock back,

But we can stop for today and remember.

For in a few days we will return to normality,

While the family is left to cope,

With this abomination !

It is like that first fallen domino,

That provokes a chain reaction.

We were beheaded, in every sense of the word,

And now it all crumbles.

As though he were the head, and we the body,

And when the head does not exist – the body dies !

It is impossible to build with parts that do not fit,

It is impossible to build with mismatched bricks.

It is an art to build a straight tower,

But a single kick can shatter it all.

And then,

Once can destroy a State !

I do not know why the search for guilty parties,

I think we are all guilty for not showing how much we loved him.

Like the children that grow up,

And only then understand their parents,

And sometimes it is too late …….

They ask for forgiveness, they write and they cry.

Maybe I am to naïve.

But I cannot understand,

How many people,

Take the law into their own hands !

How can we take the best gift ever given –

Life.

We are all one.

We share the same fate,

Old and young,

We stand grasping each other

And we cry ……..

It seems, even the essence of life,

Is belittled next to your greatness

Bat-Chen Shahak