Shema

You who live secure
in your warm houses,
Who return at evening to find
Hot food and friendly faces.

         Consider whether this is a man
        Who labours in the mud
        Who knows no peace
        Who fights for a crust of bread
        Who dies at a yes or no
        Consider whether this is a woman
        With hair or name
        With no more strength to remember
        Eyes empty and womb cold
        As a frog in winter.

Consider that this has been:
I commend these words to you.
Engrave them on your hearts
when you are in your house, when you are on your way,
when you go to bed, when you rise.
Repeat them to your children.
Or may your house crumble,
Disease render you powerless,
Your offspring avert their faces from you.

Written on the 10th Jan, 1946 by Primo Levi.
translated from the Italian by Ruth Feldman and Brian Stone.  

Blogger's note; Levi would have written this whilst lost, homeless, somewhere in mainland Europe after being set free from the Nazi death camps by Russian soldiers. He was released from the camp in which he saw so much wilful needless suffering in Summer 1945. He was left, like millions of others who were emotionally and physically burnt out survivors, to find his own way across a burnt out Europe back to what had been their homes. His destination was his home town of Turin, in Italy. The journey took him three years.