Our Hill

Where are David, Jeremiah, Juliek, and Matthew?
The lucky, the father, the musician, the loner? –
All, all are sleeping on our hill.

One survived the Holocaust,
One shipped out as cattle,
One created harmony,
One consumed by flames –
All, all are sleeping on our hill.

Where are Malka, Rebecca, Daniela, and Tzipora?
The beauty, the worker, the child, the innocent? –
All, all are sleeping on our hill.

One suffered a lingering death,
One destroyed at Kristalnight,
One shot in her mother’s arms,
One led away quietly by the hand –
All, all are sleeping on our hill.

Where are Moshe the Beadle and Rabbi Stern,
Ruth the seamstress and Herman the shopkeeper,
Old, revered men and women who could not fathom the future? –
All, all are sleeping on our hill.

They brought them old men of the Night of Broken Glass,
And women too old to work,
And broken, fragile men,
And children robbed of life –
All, all are sleeping on our hill.

Where are the people whose race, stolen by Nazi’s,
Suffered unimaginably as the world watched?

 All, all are sleeping on our hill,
So that we may remember.

Spoon River Anthology (Edgar Lee Masters)