Thursday, May 22, 2025

Where Are You?

Bashevkin! Bashevkin!

Oh where have you been?

Your page has been empty

To our chagrin

Bashevkin! Bashevkin!

Have you gone away?

Your poems we are missing

To our dismay

I know a man

Gets a break

Now and then

But millions rely

On the words of your pen

(Don’t want them replaced

By merely a ben)

Gone is the humor

Gone is the wit

It’s just not a Shabbos

When we’re without it

Yes, those were the letters

Yated did receive

When Bashevkin took

A lonely reprieve

And thinking in silence

Inches down low

He thought about losses

That some of us know

The best things in life

That we take for granted

Just can’t last forever

One day they’re supplanted

And then we all cry

And letters we write

Lamenting the daylight

That’s now turned to night

Indeed simple poets

And artists galore

Are here just a day

And then they’re no more

But those who endear us

And fill us with love

Who are larger than life

As they rise above

They, too, sadly pass

And leave us so bare

From teeming with life

And then they’re not here

Yes, poets may pass

Along with all those

Who paint pretty pictures

And write beautiful prose

But pictures and poems

Yes you can replace

And some other feature

Can take up this space

But those who instill

A spirit divine

Can never be swapped

By some poem of mine

So once in a while

The page that was blank

Reminds me that there

Are those who we thank

Whose place in the pages

Of the sefer hachayim

Is not now on parchment

But up in Shomayim

And all we can do

Is remember and thank

As we think and we thank

And cry as we stare at a page

That is blank

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