The poem invokes several scriptural and liturgical references, Jewish and Christian, often undoing or negating the words of the original text to portray death as the undoing of creation and the reversal of Genesis. See:
"Who by fire... who by strangulation": Unetanah Tokef (cf Leonard Cohen, "Who By Fire", New Skin for the Old Ceremony, 1974)
“It was evening, it was morning, the first day….”: Genesis 1:3-31
"And the earth was without form, and void", lit. Tohu-Bohu: Genesis 1:2
“you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.... thou shalt see my back: but my face shall not be seen": Exodus 33:20, 23
“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”: Luke 23:34
“As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: World without end": Glori Patri; "As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man": Matthew 24:37-42; cf Noel Paul Stookey, "Wedding Song (There Is Love)", Paul And, 1971, and Davida Coleman, As It Was in the Beginning, So Shall It Be in the End: A Collection of Poetry (Createspace Independent Pub., 2017)
“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”: Genesis 1:26-27
The fourth of the sephiroth on the Kabalistic Tree of Life is usually counted as hesed, or mercy.
Ka-Tzetnik, or Ka-Tzetnik 135633, is the name under which Yehiel Dinur, formerly Yehiel Fayner, wrote after the Holocaust. This was first publicly revealed during in his testimony at the Eichmann trial in 1961. He was born in Sosnowiec, Poland in 1909 and died in Tel Aviv in 2001. His most famous works are the six volumes that make up his chronicle of the "planet" Auschwitz. Most of his work, though first written in Yiddish, was first (and oftentimes only) published in Hebrew.
The name Dinur is Aramaic for "of fire." This theme of being reborn through fire manifests itself in a variety of forms in his work, such as the mythical salamander, the phoenix, and the three-time burning of his pre-war book of poetry, Tsveyuntsvanstik: Lider.
