by Douglas J. Lanzo
Copyright 2024
First published in Voice and Virtue Literary Magazine Issue 02 (March, 2025)
Sounds of lamentation
fill tomb chambers, trembling air,
as pilgrims pray with earnest…
their heads rocking in despair,
before an ancient coffin
where a matriarch is laid:
beloved wife of Jacob,
who succumbed, despite handmaid,
giving birth to a son
who was named Benjamin —
a father of the Jews —
outside of Bethlehem.
Some pilgrims pray to conceive,
others pray for their healing,
before sacred curtains —
faces bowed, their knees kneeling,
at the Tomb of Rachel,
their minds and hearts reeling.
Some cry at a curtain
that was once a wedding dress,
the beauty of the bride
in its weaving, now impressed,
with characters in Hebrew
bearing names of those at rest —
a daughter and a father,
touched by pilgrims, close abreast,
in gold embroidered letters
Nava and David Applebaum —
their lives taken from them
by a terroristic bomb.
Before Nava was lowered
on her would-be wedding day,
her groom rested the wedding ring
on her body where she lay;
now her memory lives on,
with Rachel’s, in hearts that pray,
that God will make love reign…
and show all sinners the way.