116 words
How bitter to abandon the King Tiger,
long 88 pointed toward the blackened sky;
to flee west for three days in the spring snow
from the T34s of the Red Army;
to toss the Luger, and wave the white flag,
a riddled rag mocked by the grinning victors;
to receive a rifle butt to the jaw
and not a bar of Hershey’s Chocolate;
to wake, with a headache, to a small breakfast
of mud and grass, a cup of yellow piss;
to struggle to hold up a brother in arms,
captured in newsreels that taunt to this day;
to turn your collar toward the camp of saints,
condemned to bear the whips and scorns of time.
3 Comments
condemned to bear the whips and scorns of time.
Those soldiers (and women and children too) did not die in vain. They shall never be forgotten. They will be avenged in this or the other life. And the coward assassins will pay for ever what they did in the Rhine Meadow and in Dresden, and elsewhere.
A wonderful little poem, piece of emotional art,etc. Defeat is bitter, as most chess players know. But how much more bitter in a life and death struggle, that, unlike most defeats, this particular defeat remains and ever present mill stone around the necks of the defeated, until death relieves it.
An inconvenient topic exposed. The truth of history without the whitewash.