He was a Jew

The poem below was found in my late father-in-law's handwriting.

We believe it is his own original but wonder if anyone else has ever seen it.

Out of the desert he crept, aged and feeble

His trembling hand clutching a gnarled staff.

His wasted back bowed with the burden of years

His tortured eyes dimmed with unbidden tears

His lined face creased with the furrows of time

His clothes shabby, dirty – no shoes on his feet.

He was a Jew.

Open in his free hand was his one possession – a book

A Sidur – a prayer book of the Jews – broken and thumb worn,

The pages yellow with age and the heat of the sun.

Crumbling, tearing as he paused to turn them one by one.

His dim eyes unable to see the words as he mumbled his prayers

But he needed them not – long ago had he learned those words by heart.

He was a Jew.

Thus he crept into the town, mumbling the prayers through his beard

Unknown, unwanted, unloved – to be cursed and jeered

Raising his blinded eyes to the heavens with his dying breath he thanked God that

He was a Jew.

And there they found him but they let him lay

"We would bury a dog," they said, "but not a Jew."

So they let him lay, his rotting flesh food for the vultures.

'Til a friendly wind sent the soft, white sand over his bleaching bones

And when long, long after they returned, there was nothing.

Nothing but a book – a prayer book – a Sidur to show that

He was a Jew