by Benjamin
Threnody for the murder of our race’s finest
(Poem for the German war-dead)
An axle snapping and the wheeling Sun
Hurtles to ruptured earth in mired woe
A hubless dusk of shrouded barbary
The soot and scrap of wild, inhuman glee
And cruellest weapons of perfidious foe
For blackest glory, in vile paucity
Jeering chthonic as the desert’s beasts
Shunting tin eyes across a bleeding sea
In all the monstrous discord of the East
Draped in fresh wounding pelts and rips of skin
Charge hollered hands to soil their very kin
The blind dominion of gilt-toothed priests
And this new screaming of each mother’s child
The primal bonds of deepest love defiled
Made great in all their strength, brave all the while
And joy is rent, the ages’ chain is cut
Through ruddy slabs long doom’s nailed jaws clang shut
And innocents besmirched by alien guile
Hell-wrought oblations, civil-suited muck
Blared fireworks and business-hasty smiles
And little deaths by millions and by miles.