Tag Archives: trigger warning

Odd poem: ‘The Mother’ or ‘Thanks’ (‘Dank’es!’) NOT by Adolf Hitler (my apologies about the post!)

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When your mother has grown old,
And you have grown older
When what used to be easy and effortless
Has now become a burden to her,

When her dear, faithful eyes
no longer see life as they once did,
When her tired feet
don’t want to carry her any more while walking. –

Then give her your arm to support,
Accompany her with pleasure –
The hour is coming. When you, weeping,
Must accompany her on her last walk!

And if she asks you a question, then give her an answer.
And if she asks again, then answer!
And if she asks yet again, answer again,
Not impatiently, but with gentle calm.

And if she cannot understand you properly
Explain her everything happily.
The hour will come, the bitter hour,
When her mouth asks no more.

Wenn deine Mutter alt geworden / Und älter du geworden bist
Wenn ihr, was früher leicht und mühelos / Nunmehr zur Last geworden ist,
Wenn ihre lieben, treuen Augen / Nicht mehr, wie einst, ins Leben seh’n
Wenn ihre müd’ gewordnen Füße / Sie nicht mehr tragen woll’n beim Gehen. –
Dann reiche ihr den Arm zur Stütze, / Geleite sie mit froher Lust –
Die Stunde kommt. Da du sie weinend / Zum letzten Gang begleiten musst!
Und fragt sie dich, so gib ihr Antwort. / Und fragt sie wieder, sprich auch du!
Und fragt sie noch mehr, steh ihr Rede, / Nicht ungestüm, in sanfter Ruh!
Und kann sie dich nicht recht verstehen, / Erklär’ ihr alles froh bewegt.
Die Stunde kommt, die bitt’re Stunde, / Da dich ihr Mund nach nichts mehr fragt!

*****

This poem is actually from Georg Runsky (pen name of Karl Wilhelm August Georg Runschke). It appeared in 1906 under the title “Habe Geduld!” in his book “Blüthen des Herzens”.

Rightwing groups have claimed that it is a 1923 poem by Hitler about his mother Klara Hitler who had died in 1907. He seems to have loved her very deeply… but he was a painter, not a poet. His mother had been cared for by the Jewish Doctor Eduard Bloch, and Hitler painted the picture above of the doctor’s house in 1913. So what? So Hitler was a Malignant Narcissist like an unfortunate number of powerful modern politicians and businesspeople. That doesn’t mean that he wasn’t capable of love or artistic impulses; you can have them and still be a narcissist. People who insist that there is pure evil in the world (whether Nazism or Judaism) are themselves a lot of the problem. Personally, I have a lot of difficulty with both Nazism and Judaism (and Communism and Christianity, and anyone who insists they are Right and they Know because their Leader or their Book says so), but I also have family and friends of all those persuasions. I don’t respect them for their authoritarian tendencies, but I also don’t think they are pure evil. The demonising of people who you disagree with or fear or are jealous of, that’s the start of the problem. We’re all people, and people are apes after all. Some people are stupid, some are intelligent but uneducated, some are sick, some have genetic defects, some were badly raised, some are sociopaths… then study them, try to make them better human beings, and in the meantime make sure they don’t have access to guns. Thank you. Rant over.

Photo: Watercolour by Adolph Hitler, 1913, House of Dr. Bloch. https://www.wikiart.org/en/adolf-hitler/maison-du-dr-bloch-1913

Using form: couplets: George Simmers, ‘Trigger Warning’

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Reading this do not expect
An unconditional respect

This poem is an unsafe space
You may be told things to your face

This poem may not feel the need
To be polite about your creed

It may not think your origins
Excuse your weaknesses or sins

It maybe will not lend its voice
To validate your lifestyle choice

It may resist attempts to curb
Its power to worry or disturb

It may not think its task to be
To flatter your identity

Although its author’s male and white
It may perhaps assert the right

To speak of gender and of race.
This poem is an unsafe space

*****

George Simmers continues to be amazed and amused by the warnings that some University lecturers seem to think it essential to give their students.  He writes: “Last week there was a warning that Jane Austen’s novels contain some outdated sexual attitudes. The week before that, students thinking of taking a course on tragedy needed to be told that it might contain references to violence and other disturbing themes. The week before that someone was worried that Peter Pan contained material that some students might find it hard to cope with. Why is this? Are the lecturers afraid of legal action from the helicopter parents who are the plague of some University departments today? Or do they really feel that their students are all delicate blossoms? Or do the warnings reflect their own discomfort with the canonical material they are obliged to teach? In the past people often did not think or behave the way that responsible modern people think they should have. It must be worrying.”

Editor’s comments: Poems written as a string of rhyming couplets can quickly start to feel mechanical and boring, but they are very effective when a straightforward list of ideas is being presented, as in this poem by Simmers. ‘The Latest Decalogue‘ by Arthur Hugh Clough is a classic of good usage (and also a classic of “unsafe space”).

George Simmers used to be a teacher; now he spends much of his time researching literature written during and after the First World War. He has edited Snakeskin since 1995. It is probably the oldest-established poetry zine on the Internet. His work appears in several Potcake Chapbooks. ‘Trigger Warning’ is from his ‘Old and Bookish‘ collection of poems.
https://greatwarfiction.wordpress.com/
http://www.snakeskinpoetry.co.uk/

Photo: “trigger warning” by lostcosmonaut is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.