Poem: Rising

 

Rising

 

a clear blue eye with a cloudy brain

watches with patient logic

as we consume and build, argue and fight,

our neck veins like pythons,

praising flags on hills

erected next to brutal monuments.

 

rocks with the calm of philosophers,

sagacious trees, and idylls of sweetsonging birds

can’t believe we strangle love

while failing to extinguish

the fires of our rage.

 

the fires of our rage.

 

self-inflicted attacks,

as we condemn those who look like us,

have voices like us,

hearts and souls, like us,

and they cry out to pure gods, good gods,

like us,

 

and yet we need to destroy them,

to shoot and hate them,

to annihilate them with our bare hands,

and guns.

 

and guns.

 

and the grass watches,

and the leaves,

and all that is left

of what is beautiful on this Earth.

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"We preferred to keep silent. We are certainly not without guilt/fault, and I ask myself again and again, what would have happened, if in the year 1933 or 1934—there must have been a possibility—14,000 Protestant pastors and all Protestant communities in Germany had defended the truth until their deaths?"