How distant my Swabian* youth seems now.
I made a glider which really flew, you know.*
Not far, but yes, it carried me! I soared!
  
Some accused me of being a showboat,
of tooting my own horn. . . . I learned early
that the laurels don't go to the meek or the bashful.
  
Yes, I was a ****. Those aristocrats
on the General Staff* belittled the Fuhrer--
but where had they gotten us?
I liked his enthusiasm and optimism.
We were in a hole; he led us out,
got the economy going again,
restored the Sudetenland and Danzig.
(Danzig where Lucie and I had been married!)
  
I thought Poland would be the end
but when we attacked in the West
I didn't shrink away.
My troops and I were the very spearhead:
strike quickly; do the unexpected.
  
Who was I to deny
Germany's world-wide destiny?
  
The African war agreed with me.
The open space gave a latitude to my strategy
lacking in hilly, forested Europe.

The victory at Tobruk is often cited
as the height of genius, military.  
I, myself, prefer what preceded it:
the retreat into Tripolitania--
salvaging men and tanks, shortening supply lines,
lulling the British into complacency;
turning and stinging at Agedabia.

El Alamein: the Fuhrer and I part company.
"Victory or Death", he cabled me.
I disagreed: my men would not die senselessly.

We were desperate for gasoline.
Ship after ship was sunk trying to deliver it.
(Lax Italian security, no doubt.)
  
We were outnumbered five to one.
I favored withdrawing immediately,
consolidating troops in Europe.
The Fuhrer wouldn't hear of it.
  
I flew to East Prussia to confront him.
He'd grown pudgier, more strident--
wouldn't give an inch.
I sensed that not just Africa
but the war as a whole would be lost.
The weight of the forces against us was crushing.
The only question'd been their willingness to fight.
That had been answered at Stalingrad.
  
I fought on in Italy and in France,
hoping to convince the enemy
that the price of taking Europe--
especially Germany--
would be too high.

I really thought we had a chance
to stop them on the beaches.
But now that we've failed, our destruction's inevitable.
  
I've tried to make the Fuhrer see reason:
surrender to the British and Americans;
don't let our country be overrun by Russia.
  
He condoned ******--
ordered me to **** the French Jewish soldiers
who'd surrendered at Bir Hacheim,* for instance,
(I didn't) -- and much more. . . . And yet,
and yet, I couldn't quite bring myself to wish him dead--
and certainly never took part in that plot--
though, yes, I knew of it . . . after a fashion. . . .
Defending myself to that group would be hopeless. . . .
Lucie and Manfred must be spared
the humiliation of hearing me declared a traitor.

I bestrode the plains of Africa--
Rommel, the invincible--
always with the troops where the battle was most critical.
I was crafty and brave,
dared to act when others shied away.
I was the apple of the Fuhrer's eye;
idol of the German people;
scourge of the British military.
All the world applauded me. I lost--
but only when outnumbered overwhelmingly.
  
Now I sit in the back of this Opel*--
an outcast, a criminal--
waiting to take a cyanide pill.

We failed to assess properly
the will of other nations to honor treaties
and preserve their freedom.
And, more basically:
Were we right to force our rule on other people?

Icarus-like, we flew too high.

We were bold and strong
but it seems, in the end,
in the end, not supermen.

Upon learning of the recent death of Willard Thomas, I decided to interview some of his former students in hopes of discovering the truth about this controversial figure.

    1.
"God, what a man! I've never known anyone who experienced life so intensely. His mind was plagued by unanswerable questions. His body was racked by the suffering of fellow human beings. His soul was tortured by the absurdity of existence.
  
His life was a struggle with the cosmos.
  
You could see it in his face.
You could feel it in his words.
  
And what a teacher! He hypnotized the class. He made books come to life.
  
We saw him in the meadow with Emily Dickinson,
drunk with daisies and the sunrise.
We saw him lugging Cordelia about the camp,
brains burst, arms aching.
We saw him fling the iron at Moby ****!!
defiant to the last. . . .
  
He was obsessed with truth.
He was in love with justice.
He was the hero of a tragedy called Existence
and he played his part surpassing well."

     2.
"Mr. Thomas was an ***. I know you shouldn't talk that way about a dead person but you said you wanted the truth and that's the truth. Every day he came into class with that ridiculous paisley tie and those irritating starched white shirts with the collars curled up at the corners and those baggy pants down to his shoe-tops and that mess of frizzy white hair and that grimace, that stupid idiotic grimace. And he couldn't teach worth ****. His lectures were a bunch of gibberish about "truth" and "justice" and there was never any discussion. The only ideas that interested him were his own. He thought of himself as some sort of tragic hero. He was a fool, a fraud, an ***. . . ."      

[In case you’re interested, I’m definitely in the camp of former student #1.]

Lounging in the dry warmth of the sun,
overcome by the beauty of the green cliffs
rising above the hypnotic blue water. . . .
  
I think of Mann's The Magic Mountain,
obsession with the physical
(not, in this case, disease, of course,
but the sensual):
  
skin glowing in the year-round sun;
ripe fruit
falling into one's hand;
air, rich with the smell of flowers. . . .
  
Wouldn't such pleasure
inevitably dull the mind's keen edge?
  
Wouldn't Eden's ease
subvert all great endeavor?

Your life, like white light, still ringing in brilliant clarity,
In bitter delicious memory in our minds.
-your beautiful life,
Standing out in burning silhouettes every time we close our eyes.

I write poems about you in my dreams.
I try to work it out in miserable half-sleep,
How a girl of thirteen could one day be wrapped in the arms of her parents,
and the next,
Immured in cold earth without mercy.

You cannot be gone.
You are so **** young.

You never met a heart you didn’t mark with the splendor of your beauty,
That outrageous, unique, chromatic personality,
Resplendent by nature,
Demure in humility.

Do you hear me where you are?
Sitting in glory at the feet of God?

Your parents will see you when they come Home.

I know that we’ll see you when we all come Home.

Kate Larson, Carol Ulverness--
19-year-old goddesses
I knew at college:
  
beauty so inward and effortless--
like Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus"--
that that of even the most celebrated actresses and models
seems to be contrived and self-conscious.
  
  
Like all of us, they're in their 40's now--
I wonder what they're like. . . .
  
Does some inner flame
still illuminate their faces and bodies?
  
Or were they flowers--
whose petals now have faded and fallen?

J. Alfred, I'm sick of your whining --
get off your **** and do something!
Yes, I know life is meaningless.
I know you've got a lot of time on your hands.
Of course, tea parties can be boring.
But let me just ask here: "Is someone making you do this?
Is someone making you hang out with these cold, scornful
   women?"
Surely a guy like you could find someone to relate to. It's
    not that hard.

No, you're not Prince Hamlet --
and you're not an attendant lord either.
You're J. Alfred Prufrock!
Eat a peach, for-God's-sake!
Talk to the mermaids!
Just do it!

<Note: It's useful to think of Whoopi Goldberg as the speaker.>

My children, as you leave home little by little--
first grade school, then college,
your own apartment, perhaps marriage--,
I hope you'll think fondly of these walls which housed you,
the slanted yellow-pine ceiling you lived under,
the warmth you felt there--
thinking of them not as a barrier
which kept you from being what you needed to
but as a harbor
from which you sallied forth to meet the ever-widening world,
to which you retreated in too-strong wind.

Yes, there are bad people in the world,
but the random person driving on the expressway has a mother who loves him
and most--by far the most--
want nothing more --like you-- than peace and happiness.

Though I've pondered deeply the universe's mysteries,
I fear I lack religion.
And if I've bequeathed unto you this unbelief,
placed on your shoulders this terrible burden,
I apologize.
It is, perhaps, my greatest failing.

(Are the tools I've given you really strong enough to fight infinity?  Strong enough to deal with our ultimate aloneness?)

May you be rich and smart but, above all, kind--
known as someone who treats others fairly.

May you find the sort of love
your mother and I have found.

Have children -- lots of them!

Return often! not out of filial duty
but rather curiosity:
"And what might those old codgers be up to now?"