By Vera Schwarcz

No better place than this,

after a terror attack

to mourn you,

Liu Xiaobo*–

on a Shabbat morning

as a Jewish mother hands

her young son some ice cream.

It is not the small kindness

of ice cream withheld

which scorches my mind,

not even the lies that walled

you in, crushing

your heart and liver.

If the Temple stood, I would

ascend with a sin offering

for all your words abused,

slaughtered,

unheard.

Instead, I turn to stones

kinder than men to beg:

Tizkor Yerushalaim a gentle man

who sought only to love

and ended rattling the chains

of memory around

the nameless dead.

Tizkor Yerushalaim the jailers

at their banquet,

celebrating money,

drenched in their dread

of truth.

Liu Xiaobo, born on Dec. 28, 1955 died still jailed on July 13, 2017. He won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2010 while serving an 11-year sentence for his role in protecting Chinese students in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and for his moderate appeals for human rights and more democracy in China.

Vera Schwarcz is a China historian and poet, currently in Yerushalaim preparing for aliya in January 2018

Readers are invited to submit original work on a topic of their choosing to Kolot. Submissions should be sent to judiej@jewishledger.com.

PHOTO: Liu