IN MEMORY: PAUL SCHULTZj

IN MEMORY: PAUL SCHULTZ

My God! My anger still is unappeased. The months have passed, almost an entire year Has passed, like all the other years before, Yet unlike every other year; Made immemorial, and more Than a memorial Of stone or marble, incorruptible rock; A cenotaph of flesh and blood and bone; The blood still, the flesh rotted now, only the bone Remaining, cold, Lying in a grave in East Berlin. How Can this fleshless memory Of some obscure, half-forgotten dead Be an immaculate monument? How Can this be my cenotaph? You may ask. Yet there are lasting pillars in the heart Which cannot be defaced, cannot decay: The fragile gold-leaf of this lost young life Has burnt deeper in than I knew; Much deeper, in my heart’s flesh, than I knew: Cauterised there By the hot bullets Whistling and tearing through the air: Permanent gold lettering, still painful through The scar-tissue with which The months have vainly tried to renew My heart. If you removed it and held it in your hand, Still beating, you would find It burnished, copper-coloured, glistening wet; The blood-red mixed forever now with gold. Deeper than I knew, deeper than I wished To know, at first: Too deep, perhaps: But there, all the same, so what can I do.

Each swirl, each ugly loop Of wire, barbed and silhouetted black Above the wall, Is like a crown of thorns pressed down Upon the forehead of the world, upon the brow Of all mankind. Wine is changed to vinegar and water By the senseless slaughter ... So that now, no matter what changes may Take place, in time, what softening of hearts, What free access Between the East and West, Nothing can change, nothing can take away That moment out of time

That One young Death on Christmas Day. Years from now, when the wall is gone And Berlin is a city once again, When Germany is whole, perhaps The world can then forget. Perhaps Paul Schultz himself can rest At last, and leave the spot where he was shot, (Still lying there in spite of what I do). Perhaps his restless ghost can leave The empty site of where a wall once stood; (Where only the ghost of the stones still stand To remind Man Of all the blood of the past.) Perhaps when the world is whole again Man can forget and He can rest At last. But I shall not forget, Paul Schultz; I shall never forget: As long as man hardens his heart and hates, And kills, and hates, and kills again, I can never forget. I believe In God, and I believe In Man: (Man may remember and Man may forget)

But Oh my God, as long as Man Hardens his heart and kills and hates You God, in his fellow man, I most humbly believe That I will remember and I will grieve For My God! My anger still is unappeased.