Part kad­dish, part lament, and a pow­er­ful call for stock­tak­ing and peace, Requiem cries out for an end to car­nage and slaugh­ter: ​“The hor­ror / the calami­ty / the dis­grace, / the rub­ble of fol­ly / and reli­gion’s stu­pidi­ties, / the dim­ness of vision / and vio­lence of despair / won’t be repaired by an offi­cer, / a bomb or a plane, / and not by still more blood. / Only wis­dom of the heart could mend it… / only the gar­den­ers of peace.“Long one of the most out­spo­ken Israeli crit­ics of his gov­ern­men­t’s treat­ment of the Pales­tini­ans, Aharon Shab­tai is wide­ly viewed as ​“the most impor­tant Hebrew poet of his gen­er­a­tion” (The Boston Globe).