Collective Guilt Lm

‘What good´s permitting some prophet of doom? To wipe every smile away …’ The orator grins at his drunken audience through make up and mask Opens the cabaret’s veil in the theatre of forsaken minds on the run Champagne flows from magic fountains while Berlin falters from grace The wild thirties dance to an apocalyptic sound of paralized conscience Outside the toothbrush moustache commandeers Svastika’s march Torches set light to mislead passion and houses of semitic prayer Crystal breaks as brown shirts parade their poisonous conquest Heil to the savage Führer when ‘reality is something to rise above’ Pirouettes swirl on stilettos while boots squash compassion and lives Caviar evades judeo-bolshevik scapegoats and trains to the camps Blond blue-eyed conception born to inhabit Lebensraum on the map Feeds into industrialist’s dream of war effort and armoured production The white flag of surrender stuck into skull bones and belligerent stride No meaningful rise of resistance only raised arms and ‘following orders’ When God capitulated and sang his swan song to the sound of hell fire And prophets of doom cashed in on gas chambers and golden teeth It’s easy in hindsight to lift the pen from an immaculate ink-pot of courage But where would I have been when ashes in Auschwitz were ascending When evil tore into the last bit of humanity in a vile coup of disgrace As I look into the mirror of history I reflect on the cowardice in my soul 21st February 2020 ‘What good´s permitting some prophet of doom? To wipe every smile away …’ Line from Cabaret the musical base on Christopher Isherwood’s 'Good-bye to Berlin' Theme for the poem ‘Reality is something to rise above' Liza Minelli