Postcards from Hitler

Let the Thunder Roll

I knew Stalin and knew him well.
Churchill even worse - not a new European.
Destroying you all was everything I craved.
Nobody left except the buttercups and milk of Germany.
In years to come, I imagined volk in pretty houses
installing old-fashioned Bakelite telephones
out of sheer nostalgia.
To me, it's an entirely putrid idea
because they don't match digital technology.

I don't want V2 rockets.
Fetch me nuclear power and fetch me Stalingrad.

31 March 1998

Brown Stamps Forever

We would sit alone in the Eagle's Nest
and spank and lie and speak about the business
of the future of the universe - one long poem unburdened
by myth and more black and white films than you care to name.

We never appreciated homosexuals and we never allowed in Negroes.
There was a repetitious repetition of everything indeed.
Take your Satchmo and your Bessie back to where they came from.

There is a direness in my white sky. There is firmness in my purity.

And only I believe it.

31 March 1998

Barry MacSweeney (1948 - 2000)

These are two poems from his Selected Poems Wolf Tongue, which you can buy here.