Shoah and Tell

By Ewan

Wed, 01 Feb 2017
  • 2119 reads
6 comments
 

Down streets too clean
for challah, kreplach or sauerbraten,
a man must go lightly towards his fate.

Under the moon and lamplit rooves and spires,
while rat meets cat beside middens, pails
and műlltonnen, where then meets now,
just this side of memory,
Kurt or Bernd or even Siegried flicks a butt
– a red firefly landing in a muddy puddle.

The tocsin rings the new day in,
church-bells toll the curfew’s beginning.

A crystal smash of windows
told innocents it was time
and time again
that such things happened.

People spill out of the Ratskeller;
rats scurry back to alleys,
allies of the sinister cats,
familiars to the jackbooted warlocks
casting runes in gothic script,
and spells over Lumpenvolk.

“Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fűhrer,
Ein Ei dottereich und Rűhrer!”

The little Corporal wore his motley
as pied as any piper’s:
we listened to the thrilling tune
leading Jűden to their doom.

Certificate U
Poem
Totentanz
Miscellaneous

Comments

Submitted by Insertponceyfre... on

Google tells me that 'Ein Ei dottereich und Rűhrer' means 'an egg yolk and verifiable agitator'

which is a bit puzzling

 

Submitted by Ewan on

 that's google translator for you. It means An egg yolk-rich (double-yolked) and more scrambled. It's a bi lingual multiple pun playing on the connotations of reich in german and the homonym "yoked" in English. Googe translate is almost always a waste of time.
Thanks for reading

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Submitted by Insertponceyfre... on

I know Google is rubbish, but it's my only option currently (unless my cat has been keeping his linguistic ability very quiet all these years)

Thanks for responding

 

Submitted by Ewan on

 I come across a language I don't know I plough through word by word in an on-line dictionary I trust. Pons.eu is okay. Eliot uses a lot of Greek for example. I can hack it when he drops in a line or two of Latin, French or German. But the Greek is all greek to me. I find the dictionary bit by bIt works okay. Of course, if I had an annotated copy it would be fine. 

Google Translate just proves how far away we are from AI. Some say we'll have true AI when the robot understands a joke, I think it will be when it can MAKE a pun.

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Submitted by Ed Crane on

I would suggest someone should point that out to Benjamin Natanyaho.

 

Submitted by Ewan on

On the contrary, I think he's learned all the lessons of history all too well. I would merely question his application of them.

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