Med en Penge-Griis
Her er en yndig Junker;
Han grynter, men har Grunker.
poem by Hans Christian Andersen
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Slaaentjørnen
Vor Junker kom i Skoven, der Grethe han saae,
Hun gik og samled Jordbær, hun trak dem paa Straa,
De modneste de bedste, hvert af dem frisk og sødt.
»Ei Grethelil,« saa talte han: »det er jo heldigt mødt.
Jeg vil hjelpe med at plukke!
Det rødeste det bedste, jeg fandt denne Stund,
De sødeste meest friske, det groer paa din Mund,
Du veed ei selv din Rigdom, men Grethe jeg veed den,
Og derfor vil jeg hjelpe Dig, jeg er en ærlig Ven.
Jeg vil hjelpe med at plukke!«
I Skoven stod en Slaaentjørn, den hørte derpaa,
Før Junkeren det vidste i Tjørnen han laae,
Og Grethe løb, hun smilte, og sagde mange Tak!
Den Slaaentjørn havde Torne og alle Torne stak.
Jeg vil hjelpe med at plukke!
poem by Hans Christian Andersen
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Spørg Amagermo'er
Der var en ældgammel Gulerod,
Saa knoldet, saa tyk og saa tung,
Den havde et ganske forfærdeligt Mod,
Den vilde gifte sig med en ung,
En yndig ung, lille Gulerod
Af Røddernes fineste Blod.
— Og Brylluppet stod.
Bevertningen var ubetalelig god,
Den kostede slet ingen Penge;
De slikkede Maaneskin og drak Dugg,
Tog Blomsterfnug,
Som det kom fra Mark og Enge.
— Gammel Gulerod hilsede med et Buk,
Og talte saa langt og saa længe,
De Ord de klukkede Kluk i Kluk;
— Ung Gulerod sagde ikke et Muk,
Sad uden at give et Smiil eller Suk,
Ung og smuk.
Hvis ikke Du troer,
Spørg Amagermo'er!
Et Rødkaalshoved var deres Præst,
Og Brudepiger Hvideroer;
Agurk' og Asparges sad som Æresgjest,
Kartoflerne stod og sang Chor.
Og der blev dandset af Lille og Stor.
Spørg Amagermo'er!
Gammel Gulerod sprang uden Strømper og Skoe,
Hu, hei! han revned' i Ryggen,
Og saa var han død, kunde aldrig groe.
Ung Gulerod loe,
Saa underligt vender sig Lykken.
Nu var hun Enke, nu var hun glad,
Nu kunde hun leve som helst hun gad,
Kunde svømme som Jomfru i Suppefad,
Ung og glad.
Hvis ikke Du troer,
Spørg Amagermo'er!
poem by Hans Christian Andersen
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The Royal Air Force Hero and the Luftwaffe General
Britain fought for her life.
Hitler’s armies prepared
For an invasion of England.
Savage air battles took place
Over the skies of Albion.
Then a miracle happened:
In the summer and autumn of 1940
The Royal Air Force defeated
The numerically superior Luftwaffe.
This was a turning point in the war.
Lacking adequate air support,
The Fuehrer could not carry out
His invasion plans.
Deeply touched by the heroism
Of the pilots, Winston Churchill said:
“Never in the field of human conflict
Was so much owed by so many
To so few”.
Only three thousand young aviators
Defended the skies of England;
Among them scores of Jewish pilots.
The British ace pilot Robert Stanford Tuck
Was one of the outstanding Jewish heroes
Of World War II. He was born in 1917
And grew up in the Greater London district
Of Catford. In 1935 the 18-year-old Robert
Joined the RAF. During the war
He distinguished himself in the skies
Of Dunkirk and in the Battle of Britain.
A Flight Lieutenant and Wing Commander
With 92 and 257 Squadrons, Tuck became
One of the top ace aviators of the RAF,
Credited with 29 confirmed victories
Of downed enemy airplanes. Flying a Spitfire,
He had first engaged in aerial combat during
The Battle of France and claimed
His first plane kills over Dunkirk.
In September 1940,
As the Battle of Britain
Gathered momentum,
Tuck was promoted
To lead the 257 Squadron
Of Hawker Hurricanes.
He had an exceedingly eventful
Combat experience; was shot down
Four times, collided twice, crash landed,
Got dunked in the English Channel
And was wounded twice.
On an August day of 1940
Tuck was on patrol in his Spitfire
And got into a dogfight
With a Junker 88 over Kent.
His plane was hit by enemy fire.
He managed to bail out
While the aircraft crashed
On a nearby farmland.
Tuck found himself descending
with his parachute towards Plovers
In Horsmonden. He reached ground
On the estate of Lord Cornwallis.
The Lord was curious to see
The unexpected visitor.
He gave a warm welcome
To the vertically arrived guest
From the sky and then invited him
For a cup of tea.
One day in the winter of 1942
Tuck flew over northern France
Outside Boulogne when his airplane
Was hit by enemy flak.
He force landed and was captured
By the same German units
That he strafed just a short time earlier.
The Nazis knew very well
That Tuck was an ace pilot of the RAF.
General Adolf Galland himself came
To interrogate him.
One of the top pilots of Hitler,
The general was a war criminal.
He developed carpet-bombing tactics,
Which he tested during the Spanish Civil War.
He flew with the Condor Legion
Of the Luftwaffe and participated
in the terror bombing of Guernica.
By the way, the 1937 horrors
of that Fascist atrocity moved Picasso
to paint one of the grand cultural icons
of the 20th century, titled “Guernica”.
Now dissatisfied with the performance
Of his air force in the Battle of Britain,
Goering promoted Galland to the rank
Of Inspector General of the Luftwaffe.
When Tuck fell into Nazi hands,
Galland was curious to meet him.
The Luftwaffe general
Treated the British ace pilot with respect
And even provided him with a slap-up meal.
Tuck became a prisoner of war
But in February 1945
He succeeded to escape.
Walking eastwards he reached
The Soviet Red Army lines.
The Russians allowed him to travel
To Moscow where he showed up
At the British Embassy.
He returned to England via Odessa.
After the war, it was Tuck’s turn
To interrogate Galland.
Then a curious thing happened:
The former German Nazi
And the British Jew
Became close friends.
In celebrating the metamorphoses
Of a new era wherein former enemies
Turn into allies, Galland made Tuck
An honorary member
Of his old German flying squadron.
Tuck and Galland struck a lasting friendship
And instead of shooting at each other
They went together for game hunting.
Then the year of 1969 arrived
And they both accepted the role
Of serving as technical advisors
For the film of the Battle of Britain.
The war became a movie.
Robert Stanford Tuck died in May 1987.
A few days after his death an obituary
In The Los Angeles Times said that
Many consider Tuck “as the greatest
Spitfire pilot of all times”.
The article paid homage to the courage
Of the ace pilot who went to combat
Facing death in the eyes with the bravura
Of a guarded levity of the heart
Combining it with excellent technical aptitude
And sterling flying skills.
In 1940 the King personally awarded Tuck
With the Distinguished Flying Cross,
Stressing the aviator’s initiative
And personal example over Dunkirk.
During the war Tuck was also decorated
With the medal of the Distinguished Service Order.
The life of Robert Stanford Tuck affords intriguing
Insights into the strange peculiarities of wars
And the irrational nature of human conflicts.
It poses an array of inquisitive questions
regarding the historical context and futility
of organized violence, the unnecessary sufferings
and avoidable horrors that we humans inflict upon
Each other.
It also reveals some bizarre ironies
Of the Holocaust. After all, a friendship
Between a Nazi Luftwaffe general
And a Jewish ace pilot of the RAF
Stands out as a very odd alliance.
Yet human history offers
Countless bizarre stories.
poem by Paul Hartal
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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A War March
Ow! Wow! Wow!
(Funeral note sustained by flutes, suggesting a long-bodied,
short-legged, large-headed dog in anguish.)
Ow! Wow!
We are the people who make the row;
We are the nation that skites and brags;
Marching the goose-step; waving the falgs.
Hoch!
We talk too much, and we lose our block,
We scheme and spy; we plot, we lie
To blow the whoe world into the sky.
The Kaiser spouts, and the Junkers rave.
Hoch! for the Superman, strong and brave!
But what is the use of a Superman,
With 'frightfulness' for his darling plan,
If he has no cities to burn and loot,
No women to ravish, no babies to shoot?
Shall treaties bind us against our wish?
Rip! Swish!
(Violins: Tearing noise as of scraps of paper being destroyed.)
Now at last shall the whole world learn
Of the cult of the Teuton, strong and stern!
Ho! for the Superman running amok!
Hoch!
Um - ta, um - ta, tiddley - um - tum!
(Uncertain note, as of a German band that has been told to move on.)
Pompety - pom pom - tiddeley - um - tum!
Way for the 'blond beasts!' Here they come!
While big guns thunder the nations' doom.
Boom!
Room! Room!
Room for the German! A place in the sun!
He'll play the Devil now he's begun!
Ker-r-r-rump!....Bump!...
(Drums: Noise of an exploding cathedral.)
Ho, the gaping wound and the bleeding stump!
Watch the little ones how they jump!
While we shoot and stab, and plunder and grab,
Spurred by a Kaiser's arrogant gab;
While the Glorious Junker
Grows drunker,
And drunker, on blood.
Blood! Blood!
Sword or cannon or fire or flood,
Never shall stay our conquering feet -
On through city and village street -
Feet that savagely, madly tread,
Over the living; over the dead.
Shoot! Shoot!
Burn and pillage and slay and loot!
To the sound of our guns shall the whole world rock!
Hoch!
Shrieks!
(Flutes, piccolos and trombones render, respectively, the cries of
children, shrieks of women and groans of tortured non-cambatants.
Violins wail mournfully.)
Shrieks! Shrieks!
Hoch der Kaiser! The whole land reeks
With tales of torture and savage rape,
Of fiends and satyrs in human shape;
Fat hands grabbing where white flesh shrinks;
And murdered age to the red earth sinks.
Kill! Kill!
Now at length shall we gorge our fill,
And all shall bow to the German will!
By the maids we ravish our lust to slake,
By the smoking ruin that mark our wake,
By the blood we spill,and the hearths we blast....
This is The Day! The Day at last!....
Praise to God! On our bended knees,
We render thaks for boons like these.
For God and the Kaiser our cohorts flock!
Hoch!
(Scrap of German hymn-tune interpolated here.)
Ach! Donnerwelter! Himmel! Ach!
(Medley of indescribable noises rendered by full orchestra, symbolic,
partly of a German band that is being severely kicked by an irate householder,
and partly innumerable blutwursts suddenly arrested in mid-career.)
Ach! Ach!
'Dot vos not fair to shoot in der back!'
Who is this that as dared to face
Our hosts unconquered, and, pace by pace,
Presses us backward, and ever back.
Over the blasted, desolate rack?
What of the plans we planned so well?
We looked for victory - this is Hell!
Hold! Hold!
Mark the heaps of our comrades bold;
Look on the corpses of Culture's sons -
Martyrs slain by a savage's guns.
Respite now, in this feast of death!
Time! An Armistice! Give us breath!
Nay? Then we cry to the whole wide world,
Shame on our foe for a plea denied!
Savages! Brutes! Barbarians all!
Here shall we fight with our backs to the wall!
Boom! Boom! Boom!
(Ten more thousands gone to their doom.)
Boom!
(Bass drums only, for 679,358 bars, symbolising a prolonged artillery war.
Into this there breaks suddenly the frenzied howl of the long-bodied,
short-legged, large-deaded dog already mentioned.)
Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate!
We spit on the British here at our gate!
Foe of humanity! Curst of the world!
On him alone let our hate be hurled!
For his smiling sneers at the Junkers' creed,
For his cold rebuke to a Kaiser's greed;
For his calm disdain of our noble race,
We fling our spite in his scornful face.
Under the sea and high in the air,
Death shall seek for him everywhere;
The lurking death in the submarine,
The swooping death in the air machine,
Alone of them all he had sealed our fate!
Hate! Hate! HATE!
(Prolonged discord, followed by deep, mysterious silence - imposed by censor -
for 793 bars.)
Bang!
(Deep staccato note as of a bursting blutwurst.)
Ow! Wow! Wow!
(Dying howl of a stricken hound. Silence again for an indefinite number of
bars. Then, in countless bars, saloons, tea-shops, coffee-houses, cafes and
restaurants throughout the British Empire and most of Europe, a sudden, loud,
triumphant chorus, toned by a note of relief, and dominated by 'The Marseillaise'
and 'Tipperary.' A somewhat uncertain but distinctly nasal cheer is heard from
the direction of New York.)
Peace! Peace!
At last the sounds of the big guns cease;
At last the beast is chased to his lair,
And we breathe again of the good, clean air.
The gates have fallen! The Allies win!
And the boys are macrhing about Berlin!
The Kaiser's down; and the story goes
A British Tommy has pulled his nose.
The German eagle has got the pip:
Vive les Allies!...Hooroo!...Hip! Hip!...
poem by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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