Kaddish: an elegy

Death and its handmaiden—grief

brought their mournful dirge to Bondi.

Today we grieve for little Matilda

and fourteen further slain;

scythed down for the sin

of being

Jewish.

And as we say mourner’s Kaddish, others clamour

for more of death’s

brazen horror—

“Globalise the Intifada” they chant,

                                              either by their reckoning

or for their God.

So I weep searing tears of sorrow

that things

have come to this pass

in our once

fair and pleasant land.