Normandy, Hey!
translated and edited by Thomas Ország-Land (May 2014)
I.
ARS POETICA:
Poet, claim your place
on the rostrum. Warn the neighbours
of the threat they face.
Share your heart with their cold world.
Share each fear, each scar.
Shed your armour, shed your clothes:
show all that you are.
never to sing again.
Never, ever, hold your tongue.
Bellow out your pain.
Watch the racist rabble-rousers.
The night is long and dark and deadly,
but expect the dawn.
It will outlive any lie.
Drink up your poison if you must,
but sing until you die.
II.
THE COLOURS THAT DAY
The soldier is tanned and blond, his car and tunic green.
His silken hound is brown and bright and cheerful.
Bound from Paris to Moscow, stranded here,
he regards our streets with mild but blatant loathing.
The traffic light turns red. The vehicle must stop.
The driver sighs, looks blank. His thoughts race far away.
A gent approaches, pandering to the German,
his balding bloated head aglow with zeal.
He asks with feeling. But he is ignored.
He is bent to the window, his brow haloed in sweat,
proud to serve our grand and glorious ally.
The light has turned again to amber and to green.
The gent attending to the German fails to notice.
He waves his arms about, eliciting
impatient, disapproving reservation.
From the parting car, the hound still holds
our friendly guide in keen, Teutonic gaze.
The sun breaks through. Its yellow rays ignite
the identifying Yellow Stars Jews must display.
For a moment, the murder, the pain, the fear that smear
even its savage heartbeat are suspended.
The 100 Years’ War released also in England at the end April.
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