Poem by Michael Leibowitz

Kadish—21 December 2025 

elegy by Michael Leibowitz

Death and its handmaiden—grief

            brought their mournful dirge to Bondi.

Today we grieve for little Matilda

                                    and fourteen further slain;

 scythed down for the sin

                                        of being

                                                      Jewish.

And as we say mourner’s Kadish, others clamour

            for more of death’s

                                           brazen horror—

“Globalise the Intifada” they chant,

                                              either by their reckoning

                or for their God.

So I weep searing tears of sorrow

                                                that things

     have come to this pass

                                                 in our once

              fair and pleasant land.