A Conversation with Martin Heidegger
6
If Sam Johnson could not kick a stone out of air,
troubling, unseen stones still fly around us,
litter of spirit strewn in the rubble of war.
A death parade led your retreat from earth.
Camps already near you in '33--
Sachenshausen, Dachau, Oranienburg--
your metaphysics an erect arm.
Whappened Toozit? Did Goebbels leave it
to a committee to diffuse guilt among us
like bad air? What would you not have done
to raise children in the mistmurk you called home?
When his first crude moves still needed
Germany and Europe to look away, you and Pius
gave Hitler a cachet. Extraordinary among
your colleagues. If Pius did not sway you
as former novice, you both subordinated
intellect, passion, and humanity
to the same mosaic--church, state, family.
Later, retired to the mountains in peasant garb,
in the hut Hölderlin said defines man, the maker
of huts, could you find no words in the woods
for the dirt in the blood of your days?
Too late for you or them, too soon for us.
No gun to my head or my family's, only perqs.
Am I uncompromising? Everyday, here, too,
is a compromise and a death, Martin. I am mute,
only a hollow tree in a raucous wind.
When a poet gasps, who hears the pierced god?
Van K. Brock
A Conversation 7 | Ein Gespräch 6
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