Cancer killed a man who led the Vilna
Ghetto uprising, fought in the forest
and knew evil when it was live and fierce
all around him and he wrote poems still

Even after the cancer took his voice
so what was left was written character,
the smell of the hospital, memory
compressed in disinfectant, pain ruling

An empire growing minute by minute,
the glow of lights off the slick floors as night
moved along towards another cold dawn
by a river on a far strange continent

Abba Kovner, we let you go and stay
with us as steel spark of the darkest day