A War Poem by Herbert Nehrlich

He'd yelled at her that day,
when she came home
with a grandiose new plan.
They had the space of course
and God would show his grace
to all the family, as he had done
before, and throughout history.

Jews will be Jews her father said,
they'll steal you blind and eat
worse than the Gypsies, who,
so help me God, will kill their kids
and those of other folks.

We cannot risk a certain death,
our Fuehrer knows the why and when,
this plague must be eradicated soon,
the German people are, there is no doubt,
the Master Race, my child, we are the ones,
chosen by God himself in his great plan.

He could not easily say NO to 'little bird',
a name she had been given as a child,
a nest was perched upon her head,
made fresh each day and held with pins.
There was a younger brother who would stare
for hours, so it seemed, unsure, perhaps
a real bird was resident for company.

So, Sunday about ten, folks were in church,
a covered wagon rolled into the yard,
four shadows rushed into the barn.
They lived amidst the straw, the green lucerne,
and were the first to find the eggs each day.

Gestapo came on Christmas Day, in 44,
there was a matter of the need for a whole hog,
who was to eat, and what a waste, there was a war.
The relatives are coming from Berlin, he said,
they love the cracklings and the country food,
you see the loaves there in the oven, twelve,
we'll be okay and would you care to taste the wine?

Close calls, in all there had been ten, perhaps
some had been missed by cautious folks,
and when the war came to an end that day in May,
they danced around the pond, amongst the pigs,
a hundred chickens, while the ducks and geese,
embarrassed by the craziness kept floating by,
their ice blue eyes kept on the comedy on land.