My Childhood World Was Once The Only World Poem by Shalom Freedman

My childhood world was once the only world
Years later when it exists only in my memory
It has become one of many worlds the Jewish people have known
In their long journey-

Its idiom and characters its look and its feel
Its small dreams and distinct languages
Are gone-

All I thought once the whole of the real world
Is only a small part of what has gone on far longer than it
And all these worlds together too
Are not the whole of the universe –

Yet my memory of this world makes it larger and larger
And for me still it is in the center of space and time –

One day soon when I am gone
No one will know it as I have-
Some traces of it will remain in the minds of other witnesses
And when they are gone
This world too will have only a remnant of it
Remaining as words.