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Home > Virtual Museum > CHGS Exhibitions > Bittersweet Legacy : Speaking to One of Germany's Sons

The Breaking of the Glass

"Listen to the Flames" by Toan Klein

The Breaking of the Glass

Jason Sommer

He observed that the rabbis present were very gay. So he seized a costly goblet…and broke it before them. Thus he made them somber. - Talmud

Make me a wedding glass of crystal
to outlast the shrillest pitches
of a solid scream,
the heel above the temple
and the people dragged
along the shards.

One true form of tears
is heaps of glass—
from windows with their faces kicked-in
and the family's crystal
and all the unlucky mirrors of the houses
now with their several million faces
that cannot reflect.

God gave Moses a mouth
that brimmed with glass
that when he spoke
his pain was keen
and the blood came to his face.
This was His way of saying:
I am the Lord
My voice is in
the gusting of the wind
and the stuttering of men
and the breaking of the glass.