Over the grave of your son you shed a tear.
You remember the boy so young and so brave
Fought for his people and now lies in grave.
I look at you crying, grieving your loss
And wondering aloud, oh what a cost!
I look at the flags flying half-mast,
I look on and know, I look from the past.
Your son's ancestors he never knew,
He heard a few stories sometimes as he grew.
Often he visited Yad Vashem,
And in my memory he was named.
I look on from the past and how well I know
The questions you ask as your tears start to flow.
For thousands of years our people had dreams
Of a land with milk and honey streams
For thousands of years our people have died
And the world just looked on as in vain they cried.
Progroms, persecutions, holocausts and such
The world didn't care, they didn't do much.
We went to our deaths with our dreams still intact
That one day soon our own home would become fact.
Your son helped defend the Jewish state
So that Never Again would we share the same fate.
You stand at the grave and you wonder aloud
Of your ancestors past and your son in a shroud.
I stand in the past, Jewish strength I don't know
Your son in the grave, now he will not grow.
But there is a difference, as surely you see
Between your dead son and his long history.
We had no defense, we had nowhere to turn
We had only a homeland for which we did yearn.
But he had a purpose, a nation to defend
He had a noble and glorious end.
His nation, you see, is people like me
Sharing the common bonds of history.
Our problems certainly have not been solved,
From the hatred of others we have evolved.
We have our own state for the Jewish population
Its problems are many, but we are now a nation.
The problems of living between Jew and Jew
Among nations of hatred can be solved by you.
As you mourn at the grave of your son just remember,
His fire's not dead but a still burning ember.
I am your future, remember me well.
I am a spirit with a mission to tell:
Defense of the Jews for me was a dream,
Now I live through your son and others like him.
He was Jew who knew what was right.
He knew what to live for and for what to fight.
He knew as I do that to assure Jews their fate
Needs Jewish solutions to Jewish problems in the Jewish State.
Copyright 1995. Reproduction in electronic or print format by permission only.
