Aceldama*

Through many gatherings we have gathered
Layers of dust;
Assimilated through the centuries
Strange customs
From strangers,
And buried what we knew
In the sand.

We stripped our wisdom
In favor of knowledge
And watered the tree
To cover ourselves with leaves.
(The fruit it bore was death).

The winds blew to make us remember
But the sand collected in our eyes
And formed scales.
We wandered in the darkness, further
Into the wilderness
And reached this place;
And found no rest ever after.

For in our ears wail the infants
Our children, our babies;
(Now ours no more),
Slaughtered for the worship of a god
Who couldn’t provide.

Strange fires we raised here
Stranger incense we burned,
We lost our sense of smell
In the rising smoke,
And lost our hearing too.

Now the valley echoes with the agony
Of innocents
Offered as a vow.
That we did,
Is beyond imagination.

This is hell
Paved with the skulls of our sons, our daughters,
Their blood cries out
And haunts the silence that fills the valley.
The Potter has broken his vessels
And abandoned this place,
We are now desolate and alone, scattered.

Now above our children
Lie strangers,
On this land bought for the price of a kiss –
A field of blood of another sacrifice,
A necropolis of aliens,
Smothering the remains of our innocent children.
Their blood is upon us.

Aceldama: The Aramaic name which the Jews gave to the field which was purchased with the money given to Judas for betraying Christ. The word means 'field of blood'. It was previously called 'the potter's field', and was appropriated as the burial-place for strangers. It lies on a narrow level terrace on the south face of the valley of Hinnom.
The valley of Hinnom was also the site of pagan sacrifices in ancient times, where the Jews sacrificed their children to Molech. The Hebrew 'Hinnom' is 'gehenna'in Greek, from which the traditional concept of hell originated.