Moshe Sonnheim

Listen

Listen to the distant drums.
Listen to the bugles calls.
Listen to the wind-blown flags.
Listen to the marching feet.
Listen to the song of war.
Listen to the cries of pain.
Listen to the gasp of death.
The Army of the Dead
Is coming near.

Across the blood-soaked fields,
Across the trampled towns,
The gutted homes,
The silent streams,
The broken dreams,
The Army of the Dead is moving on.

You sent them off
With marching band
To fight the fight
For Mother/Father land,
To bring you back
The spoils of war
And crush the foe
Forevermore.

Listen to the muffled drums.
Listen to the bugle taps.
Listen to the wind-torn flags.
Listen to the trudging feet.
Listen to the mournful cry.
The Army of the Dead
Is coming near.
The Army of the Dead
Will soon be here.

Listen

In a secret garden,
At a table just for two,
I'll be waiting, darling, waiting there for you.
We'll lock the gate behind us.
The world will never hear
The whispered words, "I love you,
Love you truly, dear."

We've shared our lives together
For nearly fifty years.
We've seen our children growing
Through happiness and tears.
We've watched the flowers blooming
And the saplings growing tall.

But now our flowers are faded
And our trees are old and bare,
And when I look around me,
You are no longer there.

But in our secret garden
At a table just for two,
I'll be waiting, darling, waiting there for you.
The gate will now be open
For all the world to hear
The whispered words, "I love you
Love you, truly, dear."

When I was born
The world was waiting there for me
To smell, to touch, to taste, to see.
What wonders filled my little eyes.
Sounds and sights I'd never heard or seen.
I crawled, I stood on wobbly legs,
I fell, I walked, I ran,
I babbled, spoke,
I learned to read, I learned to write.

Then new wonders appeared before my eyes.
The Milkman in the early morn,
The Iceman with his blocks of ice,
The Organ Grinder and his dancing Monk,
The candies for our little store,
The sizzling buns with slabs of meat,
The hungry nurses with their dancing feet,
The midnight drive when work was done.
My days were filled with joy and fun.

The world was very good to me.
The years rolled by, and I became a man.
The girls I knew were pretty and bright.
I worked by day and loved by night.
I married late but married well.
Our children flourished and theirs did too.

For them, the world was bright and new,
Filled with wonders I neither knew nor learned:
I-Phone, Zoom, Instagram.
Somehow, the world had passed me by.
The Milkman and the Iceman had long since gone.
The Organ Grinder and his Monkey, too,
Were no longer there.

Corona filled the empty space.
Old in body, young in heart,
We vowed to never let it win.
The Nazis could not kill my wife.
This Virus, too, must spare my life.

So here we sit, alone, and wait
To reap the wonder of our fate.