BUNKERS ON THE BEACH, for Stéphane HESSEL, in memory of Anne FRANK

IMAGE: A V-2, designed by Wernher von BRAUN, test launch, Peenemünde, GERMANY III.2.1942 "V-2 rocket launching sites were set up by the Germans around The Hague in the Netherlands on the 6th of September 1944. The first was launched from here against London on 8 September 1944, and took an estimated 5 minutes to fly the 300 km from the Hague...[...] Arthur Rudolph, chief engineer of the V-2 rocket factory at Peenemünde, endorsed this idea [of slave labor] in April 1943 when a labor shortage developed. More people died building the V-2 rockets than were killed by it as a weapon." [SOURCE: Wikipedia] FROM THE SOUNDPOEM'S webpage: "And yet, we remain in denial, and in some ways, we as of 2016 are lurching so violently backwards. That is why I feature here the long-line sonnet, BUNKERS ON THE BEACH. These bunkers are the insain artifacts of Hitler's Atlantikwall / Atlantic Wall, thousands of kilometers long, built with slave labor, and made of reinforced concrete so thick (<=3m), they in many places cannot be gotten rid of. I have a strong emotional, visceral, connection to all this. As a young composer/conductor, I used to bike on weekends to the spectacular Dutch coast from Amsterdam. I would see these to an American so surreal bunkers littered, as it were, like helter-skelter playthings in the charmin surrounding dunes. So, with time, I learned the history of the "Bunker Builders," Dutch who collaborated all-too-eagerly with the NAZIS. I have also rehearsed frequently right next door to the famous Anne Frank House on the Prinzengracht in AMSTERDAM. I know the same sound of the C MAJOR bells of the Westerkerk Anne writes about so beautifully in her now much-loved diary. And I have known intimately family members of the notorious "Brown Shirts," local Dutch Fascists who handed over--with only days left in the war--Anne and the entire FRANK family to the GERMAN authorities. Some poems, it is true, take a long time to gestate. This one did. Please forgive the Dutch and German phrases, like "If you couldn't pronounce, "Scheveningen," you were not/ One of them." (Scheveningen, a seaside tourist town very close to where the V-2's were launched, was the Dutch word used to test German infiltrators by the Dutch underground. If they were indeed German, they could not pronounce it properly and were shot on the spot.) These polyglot words HAD to be there somehow. For as angels know, living sound--the sound of these words still fully resonant with the unspeakable terror of the time--is much more than merely a mechanical movement of air. Finally, the poem is dedicated also to the great German-French resistance fighter, writer, diplomat, and extraordinary performer of poetry--one of the finest perhaps of all time, Stéphane HESSEL (1917-2013). The reference in the poem is from his remarkable and wonderful, Indignez-vous! / TIME FOR OUTRAGE! NOTE: #KlimaStreik & #Klimaatmars protesters only have to say this when asked how they will realize their dreams: We only need a massive "and the plowshares are beat into swords," taking this misguided energy of total war, of death and destruction, and turning it simply to follow the sun. BUNKERS ON THE BEACH—a long-line sonnet, for Stéphane HESSEL, in memory of Anne FRANK If you couldn't pronounce, "Scheveningen," you were not One of them. Resistance? "Resistance is Creativity; Creativity, Resistance." True, it was far easier to surrender, to learn the fascist salute, be a Bunker Builder in the driftsands of Total War.... THE TEXT is at: http://picture-poems.com/photoweek/from_lost-glacier)_bw.html