PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

They arrived in the States a bit ahead of the news

of invasion:  long-haired teens, who rejected the views

declared by the Reich, they disliked shirts and (more so, shoes).

favoring baggy trousers and barefoot or just socks,

and music more like Chopin's than Wagner's. Lehar's, or Bach's.

As jackboots goosestepped in, and the fist leaped from its glove,

boys like them were brutally tortured, or slain for their love

unto each other according to their given nature

(to which the Reich assigned its cruelest nomenclature).

Here they have been welcomed, fostered by a kind family

for whom politics are subordinate to Poetry,

and Love in any form is not perversity.

They are safer here than in the suburbs of Warsaw---

where a fierce storm has arisen from a September squall.

J-Called