Poem of William Hermanns

                   Wolves in Uniform

Are there not two people walking,
isolated by the yellow star of David sewn on their clothes?
I speak with them.
Tears answer.
My courage harvests the mute blessing of suffering.
Hate lurks around me,
hate from the eyes of the Fuehrer planted in a thousand faces
to change them into the one and only face.
To die is no longer meaningless
for it is he who commands death and life.
A thousand throats echo his hate.
As out of puddles the booted gait splashes the mud,
so his hate splashes out of young mouths:
"For him we hate and cry,
'Let us kill and die!"'

A child asks, "What has happened to the tears?"

Nothing is lost, tears gathering tears
wander through space and flow and spread,
they moisten the light, and the light dims.

Are there not two people lying in a puddle near My Lai?
What has isolated them?
The yellow skin?
I throw earth over the mother
and the child on her breast.
The puddle will not dry—
a humid eye that looks up, seeks light.
A thousand mouths gasp,
"We don't know why we hate,
why we kill and die
and march with booted gait.
We are not our brother's keeper."

The wolf in uniform is Lord of death and life,
and where it hunts—blessed he who is not born.

The puddles, stamped in the earth by boots,
grow into space and do not dry.
Too many tears, no warmth, no light.
The child asks, "What happened to the hate?"

Nothing is lost; hate gathering hate
wanders through space
and grows and spreads.
The hate swells to a cosmic storm
and yesterday's lords shake in their armchairs.

Hate against Jews, hate against gooks,
the same mind that plutonium owns,
the same mind that the Deluge caused
will crust the earth with crumbling bones

                                                       William Hermanns       [P203]