Monday 27 January 2014


The Nazis and Us

Lest we forget the hands and eyes
That plundered lives -
Those Fascist hands and eyes
That freely plucked the lives
In a formal casual administrated abomination
Churlish in decadence and carelessness
With the hats and badges and nothing else fathomable.

Lest we forget:  This hand and eye
Writes and reads - 
This free hand and stern eye
That recalls and tells
How the formal administration casually served up
With relish, a hope of a final solution
A universal death in neat typewritten lists.

Lest we forget this hand and eye
That might turn upon us all -
This hand to twist and eye to glaze
Turned to the Fascist way
Grim reaping and treading through the living world
Closed and charging with blackened might
Pushing death to succeed with a blazing distorted right.

Lest we forget the hands and eyes
That are blown away -
Those child’s hands and eyes
Blasted and plucked
In the blind indifference of the rocket blast
Sent by the boiling blood of a Fascist heart
Against the boiling blood of Fascist hearts.

Lest we forget our hands and eyes
That are led and fed by Grace -
These our own hands and eyes
Treasuring all lives
Those we cannot see linked small and large
In families wrapped precious along the land
In our world of life where we are taught to be free.



Colin Morgan

15 comments:

  1. we must not forget what terrible things have happened in history...and hopefully learn our lessons for a better and more peaceful future

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  2. We must never forget. Your poem is a good reminder...thank you for this.

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  3. "In the blind indifference of the rocket blast"

    What just flashed in my mind was our latest blind and indiscriminate killing machine--the drone.

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  4. I like the way that you repeat 'lest we forget' followed by a slightly different phrase each time. We should not forget, indeed.

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  5. If forgetting is unthinkable - and it is; the countless thousands who were murdered in Nazi concentration camps (and those who were slaughtered elsewhere) and Stalin's Gulag, and Assad's Syria, Hussein's Iraq, China, Rwanda, Apartheid South Africa, Zimbabwe, Chile ... and lest we forget, Britain in her past too demand that we should at least not forget what was done - then what are we to make of those who deny that these atrocities ever occurred?

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  6. Thanks for the remembrance and the reminder, Colin. There was a piece in NY Times today about how they're discovering how many Jews were systematically killed away from the concentration camps, machine-gunned and dumped in trenches and wells and any other dying-hole. And thanks for the reminder that its Fasc-ism, not Fasc-wasm.

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  7. We must never forget...a great write.

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  8. the stamp of boots - I was reading recently how Mengele and Eichmann were greeted warmly by Argentina. one wonders if the Falklands "war" - which perhaps was slightly more so than the Grenada invasion if by a slight turn of the knob - had some roots in the antipathy the British had for those criminals-cum-immigrants. ~

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  9. lest we forget - we become what we once despised

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  11. I felt the repetition worked really well. It's a topic that I have been exploring lately to.

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  12. …ah, history must not repeat itself but rather offer us new chances to improve & remember as we go through the memories day after day… the dark days of yesterday will teach us to live better today...great write… smiles…

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  13. i appreciate the close on this....because we can not just remember the darkness but the hope and light...and let that lead us as we go forward and hope not to make the same mistakes twice....

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  14. sick close here... this piece is a true reminder... well written and keeps a great rhythm too...

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  15. Brilliant Colin...great rhythm to it each verse leading on and the final stanza bringing all together. !!Thankyou.

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