A Prague Mystery

by Brett Rutherford

There is a room

that has no door.

Within it, one

who watches all

from a narrow window,

is motionless,

and has been still

and silent now

a half millennium.

Churches have flamed

as sky-bombs fell;

the synagogues

no longer call

the Shabbos crowds.

Yet all who pass

say they see him

seeing them

through leaded glass.

As mothers fled

this way and that

trapped in vain flight

from Holocaust,

he saw them all,

the rich, the poor,

street peddlers who

raised their starved arms

in supplication,

resistance men,

collaborators, all

in melee and storm;

all prayed, all died.

He does not sleep.

His stone eyes fixed

and open, have no tears.

Golem, the help

that did not come,

Golem, asleep

because they killed

the last rabbi

who could make a door

where there was no door,

who could say the words

to make flesh of clay —

Golem, the smiter,

defender of the defenseless,

who shall summon you?