Olympians
While rummaging around in my files, I found this poem about eleven Israeli athletes killed by terrorists during the 1972 Olympic Games. This struggle has been going on for over 75 years.
Olympians
Match flame touches eleven wicks nine in a menorah, two beside it on the sill one for each Olympian murdered in Munich Marianne’s hometown in Das Fatherland where she marched with Hitler’s youth and skated for Him in ‘36 swastika emblazoned upon her breast. Mornings still begin at five blades of whiskey cut her throat instead of figure eights in ice. By dinnertime she lashes out, enraged by questions from those sheltered Stateside. Tonight she tells a different tale how two soldiers talked to her parents as she studied upstairs. Whisked off to England that night, she hid in America’s Great Basin. Her mother disappeared in Bergen-Belsen. As she tells her story Candles glow for eleven Israelis felled by terrorist guns.
I’m not sure “like” is an appropriate response, so thank you.
I remember that event, which occupied some of my high school brain space along with a vicious little civil war in a place I knew I would never visit called Rhodesia, until I moved there.
Maybe someday, we will become wise and good, and those things won’t be part of our kids brain space.
Powerful.