Day 833, Yom Ha Shoah (also, today isThe National Day of Prayer) (1)

 

Let Mother Earth reclaim these bones and quench these glowing coals.

And let the sky disperse this smoke, six million wandering souls.

Their spirits are still wandering, no final resting place,

Their ashes scattered on the wind, the smoke their only trace.

 

Chorus:

Smoke and coals, wandering souls, when can they go home?

Must their names end in flames and souls forever roam?

 

Now God on high is looking down, His head sunk in His hands,

Watching smoke as it pours forth today from many lands.

Ask Argentina where did her desaparecidos go, (2)

Have they joined the clouds of smoke of seventy years ago?

Or go and ask Cambodia where one in three have gone. (3)

Should we have said goodbye to them with no more than a yawn?

 

Chorus:

Smoke and coals, wandering souls, when can they go home?

Must their names end in flames and souls forever roam?

 

What happened then still happens now and we should weep with shame

To see God’s image turned to smoke, and often in His Name.

Let Yom Ha Shoah teach us all, it’s time for hate to die.

All men are brothers to respect and still Am Israel chai. (4)

 

Chorus 2.

Smoke and coals, wandering souls, when can they go home?

When all war is no more and we create shalom.

 

(1)  Yom Ha Shoah, Hebrew for the day of Holocaust remembrance.

(2)  The desaparecidos were those who disappeared in the “dirty war” in Argentina from 1976-1983.

(3)  Two million people died in Cambodia from 1975-1979 during the Pol Pot genocide.

(4)  Am Israel chai: “The people of Israel live.”