Why do I stay silent, conceal for
too long
What clearly is and has been
Practiced in war games, at the end
of which we as survivors
Are at best footnotes.
It is the alleged
right to first strike
That could annihilate the Iranian people--
Enslaved
by a loud-mouth
And guided to organized jubilation--
Because in their
territory,
It is suspected, a bomb is being built.
Yet why do I forbid
myself
To name that other country
In which, for years, even if
secretly,
There has been a growing nuclear potential at hand
But beyond
control, because no inspection is available?
The universal concealment of
these facts,
To which my silence subordinated itself,
I sense as
incriminating lies
And force--the punishment is promised
As soon as it is
ignored;
The verdict of "anti-Semitism" is familiar.
Now, though,
because in my country
Which from time to time has sought and
confronted
Its very own crime
That is without compare
In turn on a
purely commercial basis, if also
With nimble lips calling it a reparation,
declares
A further U-boat should be delivered to Israel,
Whose specialty
consists of guiding all-destroying warheads to where the
existence
Of a
single atomic bomb is unproven,
But as a fear wishes to be conclusive,
I
say what must be said.
Why though have I stayed silent until
now?
Because I thought my origin,
Afflicted by a stain never to be
expunged
Kept the state of Israel, to which I am bound
And wish to
stay bound,
From accepting this fact as pronounced truth.
Why do I
say only now,
Aged and with my last ink,
That the nuclear power of Israel
endangers
The already fragile world peace?
Because it must be said
What
even tomorrow may be too late to say;
Also because we--as Germans burdened
enough--
Could be the suppliers to a crime
That is foreseeable, wherefore
our complicity
Could not be redeemed through any of the usual
excuses.
And granted: I am silent no longer
Because I am tired of the
hypocrisy
Of the West; in addition to which it is to be hoped
That this
will free many from silence,
That they may prompt the perpetrator of the
recognized danger
To renounce violence and
Likewise insist
That an
unhindered and permanent control
Of the Israeli nuclear potential
And the
Iranian nuclear sites
Be authorized through an international agency
By the
governments of both countries.
Only this way are all, the Israelis and
Palestinians,
Even more, all people, that in this
Region occupied by
mania
Live cheek by jowl among enemies,
And also us, to be
helped.
by Gunter Grass
I'm posting this because Gunter Grass died a few days ago on April 13, 2015, in Lubeck, Germany.
I am neither pro or con what he is saying in this poem, but like Voltaire,
I'll defend to the death Gunter Grass's right to say it.
I spent 8 months living and working in Israel in 1987-1988 and, although I'm not Jewish, I sympathise and empathise with their situation. It is hard to lead a so-called normal life when you are constantly alert for attack and surrounded by bitter enemies at every border.
This is a good article written by Heather Horn in The Atlantic shortly after publication of this poem:
As Horn says of the poem and her translation, "it is not exactly the prettiest prose in its original German, and the English doesn't read much better."
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