Cross And Chimney Poem by gershon hepner

Cross and chimney both
have carried the remains of Jews;
their link is that they both accuse
the people who were loth
to welcome them. They died,
one saying: “Eli, Eli, lamah? ”
Shema the martyr grammar
of the other side.
I wasn’t there, but nor
was God, more is the pity–less,
I should have said. Oh, what a mess
men make while they adore!

Inspired by a visit to the Skirball Museum in LA where there is an exhibition of the art of the late R. J. Kitaj. In 1985 he painted a series of small “Passion” paintings, one of which he called “Cross and Chimney”. He wrote: “I’ve come to the subject of the Shoah, which, of course, I can’t do because I wasn’t there, nor was God.” In the exhibition there is a letter to him written on May 23,1988, by Sir Isaiah Berlin from his home in Headington House, Oxford. Sir Isaiah wrote:

I feel terribly ashamed, truly, deeply, so I have tried and tried again, and keep tearing up bits of paper, sometimes two pages at a time, sometimes only half a page, but nothing that I write seems any good, morally or intellectually, or even a decent English prose. The only idea that I have is how long it took me to discover about the crematoria…..Awful to be a broken reed….I really feel contrite and ashamed. Isaiah.


1/15/08