The audience rose to its feet
As Sachs commanded
In that final oration
And sang the holy anthem
“Duetschland, Deutschland uber alles”.
The war to end all wars
Had almost delivered them
To the curl of international tricksters
Intent on destroying holy German art:
Offered up to false gods and foreign vanities
Those dark interior forces
From the eastern plains
Where Beckmesser stutters
Shuffles and blinks
A preposterous match
For the pure white flame
That Evchen kindles:
“viscerally repulsed by Jews”.
How apt - at the end of six hours
There comes the acidic aftertaste
The screeching injunction of “Habt Acht”
When “ein Volk und ein Reich”
Consumes the airy gemutlichkeit.
All this hate scythes its deadly way
Through the mists of folkish art.
In 1924, they sang with Aryan glee
[Spiegel im Spiegel]
Hitler and Siegfried alive in the wings.
September 2020
Gar Jones
As Sachs commanded
In that final oration
And sang the holy anthem
“Duetschland, Deutschland uber alles”.
The war to end all wars
Had almost delivered them
To the curl of international tricksters
Intent on destroying holy German art:
Offered up to false gods and foreign vanities
Those dark interior forces
From the eastern plains
Where Beckmesser stutters
Shuffles and blinks
A preposterous match
For the pure white flame
That Evchen kindles:
“viscerally repulsed by Jews”.
How apt - at the end of six hours
There comes the acidic aftertaste
The screeching injunction of “Habt Acht”
When “ein Volk und ein Reich”
Consumes the airy gemutlichkeit.
All this hate scythes its deadly way
Through the mists of folkish art.
In 1924, they sang with Aryan glee
[Spiegel im Spiegel]
Hitler and Siegfried alive in the wings.
September 2020
Gar Jones