 Chauvinists of Israel | Here below is a poem that Al de Grazia composed and published in 1967, for his book of poetry called Passage of the Year, that fateful year when a great victory set the stage for interminable failure. Its inspiration came from intense study of world politics and from personal experiences in wartime. It must have been composed just before the War of 1967, because he does not recall thinking of the Near East in connection with it, and indeed he espoused at that time the side of Israel. As one reads, one sees that the terrible chauvinist lust of Nazi Germany - the negation of Canaan - was in the back of his mind!
DER STAAT
Die Logik ist schwer
Eins: What is not
Cannot know what it is.
Zwei: It knows not itself,
Hence cannot know others -
Drei: for nothing can know nothing.
Vier: Magnificent nothing,
as only can Non-being be.
Gut! Jetzt alle
zusammen:
SEE IT!
HIGH ABOVE ALL!
HEIL DER STAAT!
Singe träumerisch:
Pseudopodic protoplasm
practically ooze
millionfold projection
of its creator, man.
Mehr laut:
HEIL DER STAAT !
Hier vortrag wie ein Pedagog
The slime that fascinates
the genius of ages,
whose enemies are its lovers.
Virgilius, Registrar
of the vires of Rome;
R. Kipling, Architect
of imperial English facades;
Walt Whitman,
Grand Prurient Exalter
of the American mass:
dizzied protagonists
who create what they hate,
licensed contemptuously
to exercise feebly
the liberties needed
to extend it memory.
Aber macht nichts;
sprech mit Kraft:
SALUTE DER STAAT
Und hier muss man
die Logik unterscheiden:
Others are different,
being other,
though the same.
The good outside
is as bad as others.
The others die
unheralded, unhallowed;
their past is telescopic;
their future nowhere.
Schrei lustig!
THREE CHEERS FOR OUR ETERNITY!
Mehr Soziologie:
Its past is bloody,
its prate pacific,
hate flourishes
beneath flaunted community.
Impersonating
universal consent
where few are acting;
by its definition,'
justice there is,
for it must be.
HEILIGE FAMILIE!
Und mit enthusiasmus:
Elevated for the sightless
on the shoulders of genius,
high above all.
(See it,
for if you don't,
you are against it.)
Whip, flags, the wind.
Blare, bands.
Scorch the imbibulous
awe-numbed gullets
with pledging toasts!
Mit gründlich ernst, sagen:
Fire, cannon!
SALUTE DER STAAT
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