Interpoetry


ZEITGEIST POEMS I 

                               
Wer den Dichter will verstehen

Muß in Dichters Lande gehen.

 (Johann Wolfgang Goethe)    



A GURKHA MOTHER  (Satis Shroff)

(Death of a Precious Jewel)



The gurkha with a khukri

But no enemy

Works for the United Nations

And yet gets shot at

In missions he doesn't comprehend.

Order is hukum, hukum is life

Johnny Gurkha still dies under foreign skies.



He never asks why

Politics isn't his style

He's fought against all and sundry:

Turks, Tibetans, Italians and Indians

Germans, Japanese, Chinese

Argentenians and Vietnamese.

Indonesians and Iraqis.

Loyalty to the utmost

Never fearing a loss.



The loss of a mother's son

From the mountains of Nepal.



Her grandpa died in Burma

For the glory of the British.

Her husband in Mesopotemia

She knows not against whom

No one did tell her.

Her brother fell in France,

Against the Teutonic hordes.

She prays to Shiva of the Snows for peace

And her son's safety.

Her joy and her hope

Farming on a terraced slope.



A son who helped wipe her tears

And ease the pain in her mother's heart.

A frugal mother who lives by the seasons

And peers down to the valleys

Year in and year out

In expectation of her soldier son.



A smart Gurkha is underway

Heard from across the hill with a shout

'It's an officer from his battalion.

A letter with a seal and a poker-face

"Your son died on duty", he says,

"Keeping peace for the country

And the United Nations".



A world crumbles down

The Nepalese mother cannot utter a word

Gone is her son,

Her precious jewel.

Her only insurance and sunshine

In the craggy hills of Nepal.

And with him her dreams

A spartan life that kills.


Glossary:

gurkha: soldier from Nepal

khukri: curved knife used in hand-to-hand combat

hukum: Befehl/command/order

shiva: a god in Hinduism



Der Verlust des Sohnes einer Mutter 


Der Gurkha mit einem gefährlichen Khukuri

Aber kein Feind in Sicht,

Arbeitet für den UNO, und wird erschossen

für Einsätze, die er nicht begreift.

Befehl ist Hukum,

 Hukum ist sein Leben

Johnny Gurkha stirbt noch unter fremdem Himmel.



Er fragt nie warum

Die Politik ist nicht seine Stärke.

Er hat gegen alle gekämpft:

Türken, Tibeter, Italiener, und Inder

Deutsche, Japaner, Chinesen,

Vietnamesen und Argentinier.



Loyal bis ans Ende,

Er trauert keinem Verlust nach.

Der Verlust des Sohnes einer Mutter,

Von den Bergen Nepals.



Ihr Großvater starb in Birmas Dschungel

Für die glorreichen Engländer.

Ihr Mann fiel in Mesopotamien,

Sie weiß nicht gegen wen,

Keiner hat es ihr gesagt.

Ihr Bruder ist in Frankreich gefallen,

Gegen die teutonische Reichsarmee.



Sie betet Shiva von den Schneegipfeln an

Für Frieden auf Erden, und ihres Sohnes Wohlbefinden.

Ihr einzige Freude, ihre letzte Hoffnung,

Während sie den Terrassenacker auf einem schroffen Hang bestellt.

Ein Sohn, der ihr half,

Ihre Tränen zu wischen

Und den Schmerz in ihrem mütterlichen Herz zu lindern.



Eine arme Mutter, die mit den Jahreszeiten lebt,

Jahr ein und Jahr aus, hinunter in die Täler schaut

Mit Sehnsucht auf ihren Soldatensohn.



Ein Gurkha ist endlich unterwegs

Man hört es über den Bergen mit einem Geschrei.

Es ist ein Offizier von seiner Batallion.

Ein Brief mit Siegel und ein Pokergesicht

"Ihren Sohn starb im Dienst", sagt er lakonisch

"Er kämpfte für den Frieden des Landes

Und für die Vereinigten Nationen".



Eine Welt bricht zusammen

Und kommt zu einem Ende.

Ein Kloß im Hals der Nepali Mutter.

Nicht ein Wort kann sie herausbringen.

Weg ist ihr Sohn, ihr kostbares Juwel.

Ihr einzige Versicherung und ihr Sonnenschein.

In den unfruchtbaren, kargen Bergen,

Und mit ihm ihre Träume

Ein spartanisches Leben, das den Tod bringt.




THE AGONY OF WAR 



Once upon a time there was a seventeen year old boy

Who lived in the Polish city of Danzig.

He was ordered to join the Waffen-SS,

Hitler's elite division.

Oh, what an honour for a seventeen year old,

Almost a privilege to join the Waffen-SS.

The boy said, "Wir wurden von früh bis spät

Geschliffen und sollten

Zur Sau gemacht werden."



A Russian grenade shrapnel brought his role 

In the war to an abrupt end.

That was on April 20, 1945.

In the same evening, 

He was brought to Meissen,

Where he came to know about his Vaterland's defeat.

The war was lost long ago.

He realised how an ordinary soldier

Became helpless after being used as a tool in the war,

Following orders that didn't demand heroism 

In the brutal reality of war.



It was a streak of luck,

And his inability to ride a bicycle,

That saved his skin

 At the Russian-held village of Niederlausitz.

His comrades rode the bicycle,

And he was obliged to give them fire-support

With a maschine-gun.

His seven comrades and the officer

Were slain by the Russians.

The only survivor was a boy 

Of seventeen named Grass.

Günter Grass.

He abandoned his light maschine-gun,

And left the house of the bicycle-seller,

Through the backyard garden 

With its creaky gate.



What were the chances in the days of the Third Reich

For a 17 year old boy to understand the world?

The BBC was a feindliche radio,

And Goebbels' propaganda maschinery 

Was in full swing.

There was no time to reflect in those days.

Fürcht und Elend im Dritten Reich,

Wrote Bertold Brecht later.

Why did he wait till he was almost eighty?

Why did he torment his soul all these years?

Why didn't he tell the bitter truth,

About his tragi-comical role in the war

With the Waffen-SS?

He was a Hitlerjunge,

A young Nazi.

Faithful till the end.

A boy who was seduced by the Waffen-SS.

His excuse:

"Ich habe mich verführen lassen."



The reality of the war brought 

Endless death and suffering.

He felt the fear in his bones,

His eyes were opened at last.



Grass is a figure,

You think you know well.

Yet he's aloof 

And you hardly know him,

This literary titan.

He breathes literature 

And political engagement.

In his new book:

 Beim Häuten der Zwiebeln

He confides he has lived from page to page,

And from book to book.



Is he a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?

Dr. Freud and Mephistopheles,

In the same breast?

Grass belongs to us,

For he has spent the time with us.

It was his personal weakness

Not to tell earlier.

He's a playwright, director and actor

Of his own creativeness.

His characters Oskar and Mahlke weren't holy Joes.

It was his way of indirectly showing

What went inside him.

Ach, his true confession took time.

It was like peeling an onion with tears,

One layer after the other.

Better late than never.