How Gentlemen Earn Their Pensions

by Yaacov Dovid Shulman

The earth isn’t very new after all,
The leaders of Israel have been shrinking and shrinking,
Now they no longer care about their place in history,
They bring a shovel to the negotiating table
To bury their neighbors
So that they can take over their villas.

The Jew smiles at Goebbels, at Torquemada,
At Martin Luther, at Nebuchadnezzar,
Come in, did you bring Adolf?
Let’s negotiate the heads, the eyes of my people,
Their teeth, their children, their water,
Their sky,
In a decade we’ll meet again in southern France,
We’ll all be retired and gentlemen,
And this is how gentlemen earn their pensions.

The more clever these Jewish leaders become,
The shorter and stouter do they grow,
They scurry about, being realistic and clever,
And even as they do the ceiling comes down
And the office cubicles grow more and more narrow,
And the President of Syria and the Prince of Saudi Arabia
And the American Secretary of State
And many other curious onlookers
Jostle to gaze down on them,
As they squeak and twitch their whiskers.