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LYRICS FROM THE DIASPORA I (Satis Shroff, Freiburg)

SANTA FE (Satis Shroff)

A German professor wooed me

And said I could still do my creative writing work

If, and when, I married him.

I said 'Ja' and gave birth to five children,

And had no time to write.

I was forever changing napkins,

Applying creams on the baby's bottom,

Cooking meals for seven family members,

Washing the piles of cups and plates, forks, spoons, knives

And clothes.

Dusting the many windows of a three-storied house,

Feeding and nursing the small ones,

Praising and caressing the bigger ones.

It was a full time job.

I had snatches of thoughts for my writing.

But since I didn't have time to jot them down,

They evaporated into thin air.

Lost were my intellectual gems,

Between sunrise and sunset.

I became too tired of it all.

I was glad if I could get a good night's sleep.

Sleep, Nature's balm, soothed me to bear the hardships.

The family was too much with me.

One day I left for Santa Fe,

The one place where I felt free.

Free to think and sort out my thoughts,

And watch them grow in my laptop.

******

THE BROKEN POET (Satis Shroff)

I was the president of the Nepali Literary Society

And my realm was a small kingdom

Of readers and writers in the foothills of the Himalayas.

I came a long way,

Having started as an accountant of His Majesty’s government.

I was a Brahmin and married a Chettri woman,

Pretty as a Bollywood starlet.

It flattered my masculinity,

For she was a decade younger than I.

I took up writing late and managed to publish a few poems.

They said my verses were bad and received many reject slips.

By chance I ran into a gifted young man,

Who became my ghost writer.

When I was too busy doing business and juggling figures to suit my purpose,

He’d write wonderful verses and short-stories in my name.

My fame grew and in this small kingdom

I was highly decorated for my boundless creativity.

Books of verse appeared with my name.

My poems were recited at literary circles.

I became prolific and prominent.

Till my ghost-writer ran away with my young wife.

And there I was, an old, bruised, run-down old man.

Bedridden and waiting for Yamaraj to summon me,

To face the eternal destiny of life,

After a bout of liver cirrhosis.

The raksi, Gurkha rum and expensive Scotch

Got the better of me.

I kept a stiff upper-lip till the bitter end.

Glossary:

Bahun / Chettri: high caste Hindus in Nepal

Bollywood: India’s Hollywood, located in Bombay (Mumbai)

Yamaraj: God of Death in Hinduism

Raksi: high percentage alcohol sold in Nepal, Darjeeling, Sikkim, Bhutan

Gurkha: Soldier from Nepal

***********

MY NEPAL, QUO VADIS? (Satis Shroff)

My Nepal, what has become of you?

Your features have changed with time.

The innocent face of the Kumari

Has changed to the blood-thirsty countenance of Kal Bhairab,

From development to destruction,

From bikas to binas.

A crown prince fell in love,

But couldn’t assert himself,

In a palace where ancient traditions still prevail.

Despite Eton college and a liberal education,

He chose guns instead of rhetoric,

And ended his young life,

As well as those of his parents and other royal members.

An aunt from London aptly remarked,

He was like the terminator.’

Another bloodshed in a Gorkha palace,

Recalling the Kot massacre under Jung Bahadur Rana.

You’re no longer the same

There’s insurrection and turmoil

Against the government and the police.

Your sons and daughters are at war,

With the Gurkhas again.

Maobadis with revolutionary flair,

With ideologies from across the Tibetan Plateau and Peru.

Ideologies that have been discredited elsewhere,

Flourish in the Himalayas.

Demanding a revolutionary-tax from tourists and Nepalis

With brazen, bloody attacks

Fighting for their own rights

And the rights of the bewildered common man.

Well-trained government troops at the orders

Of politicians safe in Kathmandu.

Leaders, who despise talks and compromises,

Flex their tongues and muscles,

And let the imported automatic salves speak their deaths.

Ill-armed guerrillas against well-armed Royal Gurkhas

In the foothills of the Himalayas.

Nepali children have no chance, but to take sides

To take to arms not knowing the reason and against whom.

The child-soldier gets orders from grown-ups

And the hapless souls open fire.

Hukum is order, the child-soldier cannot reason why.

Shedding precious human blood,

For causes they both hold high.

Ach, this massacre in the shadow of the Himalayas.

Nepalis look out of their ornate windows,

In the west, east, north and south Nepal

And think:

How long will this krieg go on?

How much do we have to suffer?

How many money-lenders, businessmen, civil servants,

Policemen and gurkhas do the Maobadis want to kill

Or be killed?

How many men, women, boys and girls have to be mortally injured

Till Kal Bhairab is pacified by the Sleeping Vishnu?

How many towns and villages in the seventy five districts

Do the Maobadis want to free from capitalism?

When the missionaries close their schools,

Must the Hindus and Buddhists shut their temples and shrines?

Shall atheism be the order of the day?

Not in Nepal.

It breaks my heart, as I hear over the radio:

Nepal’s not safe for visitors.

Visitors who leave their money behind,

In the pockets of travel agencies, rug dealers, currency and drug dealers,

And hordes of ill-paid honest Sherpas and Tamang porters.

Sweat beads trickling from their sun-burnt faces,

In the dizzy heights of the Dolpo, Annapurna ranges

And the Khumbu glaciers.

Eking out a living and facing the treacherous

Icy crevasses, snow-outs, precipices

And a thousand deaths.

Beyond the beaten trekking paths

Live the poorer families of Nepal.

No roads, no schools,

Sans drinking water and sans hospitals,

Where aids and children’s work prevail.

Lichhavis, Thakuris and Mallas have made you eternal

Man Deva inscribed his title on the pillar of Changu,

After great victories over neighbouring states.

Amshu Verma was a warrior and mastered the Lichavi Code.

He gave his daughter in marriage to Srong Beean Sgam Po,

The ruler of Tibet, who also married a Chinese princess.

Jayastathi Malla ruled long and introduced the system of the caste,

A system based on the family occupation,

That became rigid with the tide of time.

Yaksha Malla the ruler of Kathmandu Valley,

Divided it into Kathmandu, Patan and Bhadgaon for his three sons.

It was Prithvi Narayan Shah of Gorkha,

Who brought you together,

As a melting pot of ethnic diversities.

With Gorkha conquests that cost the motherland

Thousands of ears, noses and Nepali blood

The Ranas usurped the royal throne

And put a prime minister after the other for 104 years.

104 years of a country in poverty and medieval existence.

It was King Tribhuvan’s proclamation and the blood of the Nepalis,

Who fought against the Gorkhas under the command of the Ranas,

That ended the Rana autocracy.

His son King Mahendra saw to it that he held the septre

When Nepal entered the UNO.

The multiparty system along with the Congress party was banned.

Then came thirty years of Panchayat promises of a Hindu rule

With a system based on the five village elders,

Like the proverbial five fingers in one’s hand,

That are not alike and yet functioned in harmony.

The Panchayat government was indeed an old system,

Packed and sold as a new and traditional one.

A system is just as good as the people who run it.

And Nepal didn’t run.

It revived the age-old chakary,

Feudalism with its countless spies and yes-men,

Middle-men who held out their hands

For bribes, perks and amenities.

Poverty, caste-system with its divisions and conflicts,

Discrimination, injustice, bad governance

Became the nature of the day.

A big chasm appeared between the haves-and-have-nots.

The social inequality, frustrated expectations of the poor

Led to a search for an alternative pole.

The farmers were ignored, the forests and land confiscated,

Corruption and inefficiency became the rule of the day.

Even His Majesty’s servants went so far as to say:

Raja ko kam, kahiley jahla gham.

The birthplace of Buddha

And the Land of Pashupati,

A land which King Birendra declared a Zone of Peace,

Through signatures of the world’s leaders

Is at war today.

Bush’s government paid 24 million dollars for development aid,

Another 14 million dollars for insurgency relevant spendings

5,000 M-16 rifles from the USA

5,500 maschine guns from Belgium.

Guns that are aimed at Nepali men, women and children,

In the mountains of Nepal.

Alas, under the shade of the Himalayas,

This corner of the world has become volatile again.

My academic friends have changes sides,

From Mandalay to Congress

From Congress to the Maobadis.

From Hinduism to Communism.

The students from Dolpo and Silgadi,

Made unforgettable by Peter Mathiessen in his quest for his inner self

And his friend George Schaller’s search for the snow leopard,

Wrote Marxist verses and acquired volumes

From the embassies in Kathmandu:

Kim Il Sung’s writings, Mao’s red booklet,

Marx’s Das Kapital and Lenin’s works,

And defended socialist ideas

At His Majesty’s Central Hostel in Tahachal.

I see their earnest faces, then with books in their arms

Now with guns and trigger-happy,

Boisterous and ready to fight to the end

For a cause they cherish in their frustrated and fiery hearts.

But aren’t these sons of Nepal misguided and blinded

By the seemingly victories of socialism?

Even Gorbachov pleaded for Peristroika,

And Putin admires Germany, its culture and commerce.

Look at the old Soviet Union, and other East Bloc nations.

They have all swapped sides and are EU and Nato members.

Globalisation has changed the world fast,

But in Nepal time stands still

The blind beggar at the New Road gate sings:

Lata ko desh ma, gaddha tantheri.

In a land where the tongue-tied live,

The deaf desire to rule.

Oh my Nepal, quo vadis?

The only way to peace and harmony is

By laying aside the arms.

Can Nepal afford to be the bastion of a movement and a government

That rides rough-shod over the lives and rights of fellow Nepalis?

Can’t we learn from the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq?

The Maobadis must be given a chance at the polls,

Like all other democratic parties.

For the Maobadis are bahuns and chettris,

Be they Prachanda or Baburam Bhattrai,

Leaders who’d prefer to retain monarchy in Nepal.

What better chance for a constitutional monarch,

A re-incarnated Vishnu,

Who holds the executive, judiciary, legislative,

Spiritual and temporal powers

In the shadow of the Himalayas.

---------------

A GURKHA MOTHER (Satis Shroff)

(Death of a Precious Jewel)

The gurkha with a khukri

But no enemy

Works for the United Nations

And yet gets shot at

In missions he doesn't comprehend.

Order is hukum, hukum is life

Johnny Gurkha still dies under foreign skies.

He never asks why

Politics isn't his style

He's fought against all and sundry:

Turks, Tibetans, Italians and Indians

Germans, Japanese, Chinese

Argentenians and Vietnamese.

Indonesians and Iraqis.

Loyalty to the utmost

Never fearing a loss.

The loss of a mother's son

From the mountains of Nepal.

Her grandpa died in Burma

For the glory of the British.

Her husband in Mesopotemia

She knows not against whom

No one did tell her.

Her brother fell in France,

Against the Teutonic hordes.

She prays to Shiva of the Snows for peace

And her son's safety.

Her joy and her hope

Farming on a terraced slope.

A son who helped wipe her tears

And ease the pain in her mother's heart.

A frugal mother who lives by the seasons

And peers down to the valleys

Year in and year out

In expectation of her soldier son.

A smart Gurkha is underway

Heard from across the hill with a shout

'It’s an officer from his battalion.

A letter with a seal and a poker-face

"Your son died on duty", he says,

"Keeping peace for the country

And the United Nations".

A world crumbles down

The Nepalese mother cannot utter a word

Gone is her son,

Her precious jewel.

Her only insurance and sunshine

In the craggy hills of Nepal.

And with him her dreams

A spartan life that kills.

Glossary:

gurkha: soldier from Nepal

khukri: curved knife used in hand-to-hand combat

hukum: Befehl/command/order

shiva: a god in Hinduism

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Der Verlust des Sohnes einer Mutter (Satis Shroff)

Der Gurkha[1] mit einem gefährlichen Khukuri[2]

Aber kein Feind in Sicht,

Arbeitet für den UNO, und wird erschossen

für Einsätze, die er nicht begreift.

Befehl ist Hukum[3], Hukum ist sein Leben

Johnny Gurkha[4] stirbt noch unter fremdem Himmel.

Er fragt nie warum

Die Politik ist nicht seine Stärke.

Er hat gegen alle gekämpft:

Türken, Tibeter, Italiener, und Inder

Deutsche, Japaner, Chinesen,

Vietnamesen und Argentinier[5].

Loyal bis ans Ende,

Er trauert keinem Verlust nach.

Der Verlust des Sohnes einer Mutter,

Von den Bergen Nepals.

Ihr Großvater starb in Birmas Dschungel

Für die glorreichen Engländer.

Ihr Mann fiel in Mesopotamien,

Sie weiß nicht gegen wen,

Keiner hat es ihr gesagt.

Ihr Bruder ist in Frankreich gefallen,

Gegen die teutonische Reichsarmee.

Sie betet Shiva[6] von den Schneegipfeln an

Für Frieden auf Erden, und ihres Sohnes Wohlbefinden.

Ihr einzige Freude, ihre letzte Hoffnung,

Während sie den Terrassenacker auf einem schroffen Hang bestellt.

Ein Sohn, der ihr half,

Ihre Tränen zu wischen

Und den Schmerz in ihrem mütterlichen Herz zu lindern.

Eine arme Mutter, die mit den Jahreszeiten lebt,

Jahr ein und Jahr aus, hinunter in die Täler schaut

Mit Sehnsucht auf ihren Soldatensohn.

Ein Gurkha ist endlich unterwegs

Man hört es über den Bergen mit einem Geschrei.

Es ist ein Offizier von seiner Batallion.

Ein Brief mit Siegel und ein Pokergesicht

„Ihren Sohn starb im Dienst“, sagt er lakonisch

„Er kämpfte für den Frieden des Landes

Und für die Vereinigten Nationen“.

Eine Welt bricht zusammen

Und kommt zu einem Ende.

Ein Kloß im Hals der Nepali Mutter.

Nicht ein Wort kann sie herausbringen.

Weg ist ihr Sohn, ihr kostbares Juwel.

Ihr einzige Versicherung und ihr Sonnenschein.

In den unfruchtbaren, kargen Bergen,

Und mit ihm ihre Träume

Ein spartanisches Leben, das den Tod bringt.

___________________________________________________________________

MY NIGHTMARE (Satis Shroff)

When the night is not too cold

And when my bed isn’t cold

I dream of a land far away.

A land where a king rules his realm,

A land where there are still peasants without rights,

Who plough the fields that don’t belong to them.

A land where the children have to work,

And have no time for daydreams,

Where girls cut grass and sling heavy baskets on their backs.

Tiny feet treading up the steep path.

A land where the father cuts wood from sunrise till sunset,

And brings home a few rupees.

A land where the innocent children stretch their right hands,

And are rewarded with dollars.

A land where a woman gathers white, red, yellow and crimson

tablets and pills,

From the altruistic world tourists who come her way.

Most aren’t doctors or nurses,

But they distribute the pills,

With no second thoughts about the side-effects.

The Nepali woman possesses an arsenal,

Of potent pharmaceuticals.

She can’t read the finely printed instructions,

For they are in German, French, English, Czech,

Japanese, Chinese, Italian and Spanish.

What does she care, the hieroglyphs are always there.

Black alphabets appear like an Asiatic buffalo to her.

Kala akshar, bhaisi barabar,’ says the Nepali woman,

For she can neither read nor write.

The very thought of her giving the bright pills and tablets

To another ill Nepali child or mother,

Torments my soul.

How ghastly this thoughtless world

Of educated trekkers who give medical alms

And play the macabre role of physicians

In the amphitheatre of the Himalayas.

---------------

BOMBAY BROTHEL (Satis Shroff)

You’re not going to get away this time.

And you’ll never ever bring a Nepali child

To a Bombay brothel,’ I said to myself.

I’d killed a man who’d betrayed me

And sold me to an old, cunning Indian woman,

Who ran a brothel in Bombay’s Upper Grant Road.

I still see the face of Lalita-bai,

Her greedy eyes gleaming at the sight of rich Indian customers.

I hear the eternal video-music of Bollywood.

The man I’d slain

Had promised to give me a job,

As a starlet in Bollywood.

I was young, naïve and full of dreams.

He took me to a shabby, cage-like room

And told me to wait.

Three thugs did the rest.

They robbed my virginity,

Which I’d wanted to save

For the man I’d marry one day.

They thrashed me, put me on drugs.

I had no control over my limbs,

My torso, my mind.

It was Hell on earth.

I was starring in a bad Bollywood film,

A lamb that had been sacrificed,

Not to the Hindu Gods,

But to Indian customers and pimps

From all walks of life.

What followed were five years of captivity,

Rape and molestation.

I pleaded with tears in my eyes

To the customers to help me out of my misery.

They just shook their heads and beat me,

Ravished me and threw dirty rupees at my face.

I never felt so ashamed, demeaned,

Maltreated in my young life.

One day a local doctor with a lab-report

Told Lalita-bai that I had aids.

From that day on I became an outcast.

I was beaten and bruised,

For a disease I hadn’t asked for.

I felt broken and wretched.

I returned to Nepal, my homeland.

I lived like a recluse,

Didn’t talk to anyone.

I worked in the fields,

Cut grass and gathered firewood.

I lost my weight.

I was slipping.

Till the day the man who’d ruined

My life came in search of new flesh

For Bombay’s brothels.

I asked the man to spend the night in my house.

He agreed readily.

I cooked for him, gave him a lot of raksi,

Till he sang and slept.

It was late at night.

I knew he’d go out to the toilet

After all that drinking.

I got up, took my naked khukri

And followed him stealthily.

The air was fresh outside.

A mountain breeze made the leaves

Emit a soft whispering sound.

I crouched behind a bush and waited.

He murmured drunkenly ‘Resam piri-ri.’

As he made his way back,

I was behind him.

I took a big step forwards with my right foot,

Swung the khukri blade

And hit him behind his neck.

I winced as I heard a crack,

Flesh and bone giving in.

A spurt of blood in the moonlight.

He fell with a thud in two parts.

His distorted head rolled to one side,

And his body to the other.

My heart was racing.

I couldn’t almost breathe.

I sat hunched like all women do,

Waited to catch my breath.

The minutes seemed like hours.

I got up, went to the dhara to wash my khukri.

I never felt so relieved in my life.

I buried him that night.

But I had nightmares for the rest of my life.

Glossary:

khukri: curved multipurpose knife often used in Nepali households and by Gurkha regiments as a deadly weapon.

Dhara: water-sprout in the hills.

Resam piri-ri: a popular Nepali folksong heard often along the trekking-trails of Annapurna, Langtang and Everest.

Bollywood: India’s Hollywood

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When Mother Closes Her Eyes (Satis Shroff)

When mother closes her eyes,

She sees everything in its place

In the kingdom of Nepal.

She sees the highest building in Kathmandu,

The King’s Narayanhiti palace.

It looms higher than the dharara,

Swayambhu, Taleju and Pashupati,

For therein lives Vishnu,

Whom the Hindus call the unconquerable preserver.

The conqueror of Nepal?

No, that was his ancestor Prithvi Narayan Shah,

A king of Gorkha.

Vishnu is the preserver of the world,

With qualities of mercy and goodness.

Vishnu is all-pervading and self existent,

Visits the Nepal’s remote districts

In a helicopter with his consort and militia.

He inaugurates building

Factories and events.

Vishnu dissolves the parliament too,

For the sake of his kingdom.

His subjects and worshippers are, of late, divided.

Have Ravana and his demons besieged his land?

When mother opens her eyes,

She sees Vishnu still slumbering

On his bed of Sesha, the serpent

In the pools of Budanilkantha and Balaju.

Where is the Creator?

When will he wake up from his eternal sleep?

Only Bhairab’s destruction of the Himalayan world is to be seen.

Much blood has been shed between the decades and the centuries.

The mound of noses and ears of the vanquished at Kirtipur,

The shot and mutilated at the Kot massacre,

The revolution in front of the Narayanhiti Palace,

When Nepalis screamed and died for democracy.

And now the corpses of the Maobadis,

Civilians and Nepali security men.

Hush! Sleeping Gods should not be awakened.

*******

A DISRUPTED LIFE (Satis Shroff)

I bought some buns and bread at the local bakery

And met our elderly neighbour Frau Nelles

She looked well-dressed and walked with a careful gait,

Up the Pochgasse having done her errands.

She greeted in German with ‘Guten morgen.’

Sighed and said, ‘ Wissen Sie,

I feel a wave of sadness sweep over me.’

Why?’ I asked.

Today is our wedding anniversary.’

Is it that bad?’ I whispered.

Yes,’ she replied.

My husband just stares at me and says nothing,

And has that blank expression on his face.

This isn’t the optimistic, respected philology professor

I married thirty years ago.

He forgets everything.

Our birthdays, the anniversaries of our children, the seasons.

My husband has Alzheimer.

Es tut so weh!

Our double bed isn’t a bed of roses anymore,

It’s a bed of thorny roses.

I snatch a couple of hours of sleep,

When I can.

I don’t have a husband now,

I have a child,

That needs caring day and night.

I’ve become apprehensive.

I’m concerned when he coughs

Or when he stops to breathe.

He snores again,

And keeps me awake.

Has prostrate problems,

And is fragile.

Like Shakespeare aptly said:

Care keeps his watch in every old (wo)man’s eye,

And where care lodges, sleep will never lie.’

Neither can I live with myself,

Nor can I bring him to a home.

Glossary:

Guten morgen: good morning

Es tut so weh!: It pains such a lot

-----------------------------

KATHMANDU IS NEPAL (Satis Shroff)

There were two young men, brothers

Who left their homes

In the foothills of the Eastern Himalayas.

The older one, for his father had barked at him,

Go to Nepal and never come home again.”

The younger, for he couldn’t bear the beatings

At the hands of his old man

.

The older brother sobbed and stifled his sorrow and anger

For Nepal was in fact Kathmandu,

With its colleges, universities, Education Ministry,

Temples, Rana-palaces and golden pagodas

And also its share of hippies, hashish, tourists,

Rising prices and expensive rooms to rent.

The younger brother went to Dharan,

And enlisted in the British Army depot

To become a Gurkha, a soldier in King Edwards Own Gurkha Rifles.

He came home the day became a recruit,

With a bald head, as though his father had died.

He looked forward to the parades and hardships

That went under the guise of physical exercises.

He thought of stern, merciless sergeants and corporals

Of soccer games and regimental drills

A young man’s thrill of war-films and scotch and Gurkha-rum evenings.

He’d heard it all from the Gurkhas who’s returned in the Dasain festivals.

There was Kunjo Lama his maternal cousin,

Who boasted of his judo-prowess and showed photos of his British gal,

A pale blonde from Chichester in an English living-room.

It was a glorious sunset,

The clouds blazing in scarlet and orange hues,

As the young man, riding on the back of a lorry,

Sacks full of rice and salt,

Stared at the Siwaliks and Mahabharat mountains

Dwindling behind him.

As the sun set in the Himalayas,

The shadows grew longer in the vales.

The young man saw the golden moon,

Shining from a cloudy sky.

The same moon he’d seen on a poster in his uncle’s kitchen

As he ate cross-legged his dal-bhat-shikar after the hand-washing ritual.

Was the moon a metaphor?

Was it his fate to travel to Kathmandu,

Leaving behind his childhood friends and relatives in the hills,

Who were struggling for their very existence,

In the foothills of the Kanchenjunga,

Where the peaks were not summits to be scaled, with or without oxygen,

But the abodes of the Gods and Goddesses.

A realm where bhuts and prets, boksas and boksis,

Demons and dakinis prevailed.

Glossary:

Ranas: a ruling class that usurped the throne and ruled for 104 years in Nepal

Gurkhas: Nepali soldiers serving in Nepalese, Indian and British armies

Dal-bhat: Linsen und Reis

Shikar: Fleischgericht

Bhuts and prets: Demonen und Geister

Boksas und Boksis: männliche und weibliche Hexen

-------------------------

MENTAL MOLOTOVS (Satis Shroff)

When Hoyerswerda burns

They discuss about the asylum-seekers.

Peaceful, righteous Germans go

In the streets with candles.

When a house burns in Mölln

They discuss about bringing back

Soldiers from the dangers of Somalia.

At the Turkish funeral in Solingen

The Chancellor keeps away

And avoids thus

Rotten eggs and tomatoes

That might come his way.

When the trial comes

The skin and neonazi has a lot of hair.

He wears a two-piece suit,

Ties a tie around his neck

And looks oh-so-respectable.

He peers into the cameras

With clear blue eyes and says:

"I'm innocent and a victim

Of the modern industrial society".

And withdraws his statement.

The judges are lenient

And the neo gets off on bail

Gestures with his middle finger

And quips:"Leck mich am Arsch!"

As he speeds away in a car

Only to reappear with a Molotov

Like the Sphinx again.

"Ausländer Raus!

Deutschland den Deutschen!"

These are the slogans

making the rounds in the nineties.

The old black and white flag

From the Third Reich

Raises no eyebrows

At soccer stadiums, streets and pubs.

It's fashionable again

To throw mental Molotovs

At blacks, browns, yellows

And all non-Teutonics

At cocktails, chats

Stammtisch and in the streets

Against anything alien.

"I don't like foreigners

I'll kill you", says a drunk

In broad daylight at the Bahnhof.

Please don't ask me

How it feels

To be a non-Teutonic

In Deutschland.

----------------------------

A Walk Through the Graveyard (Satis Shroff)

On the way to the gym hall with my children,

We go through a cemetery.

Julian hides between the tombstones,

Only to show up in front of us with a grin.

Elena hums “Gottes Liebe ist so wunderbar.”

A song she picked up at her catholic Kindergarden.

She asks suddenly, ‘Papa, what happens when one dies?’

Glossary:

Gottes Liebe ist so wunderbar: God's love is so wonderful

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