Answering Gunther Grass

Gunther better you are silent

Gunther stay silent, let your works collect dust


If you seek to speak lies and betray the trust

About what is obvious truth

The question remains, what has your nation really survived?

Apart a megalomaniac’s vision for a new world

Which left an unfinished thesis of human destruction

In volumes on human suffering for not one, but many nations.

Does not one have the right, when a sword hovers over one’s head

To at least kick the holder right in the balls

(perhaps, groin is more ladylike) for maximum effectiveness

Given that no one wants to come to your aid

Despite your smaller size, therefore you must play dirty

If the other side will not umpire a fair game.

And it is to the world’s shame because we all want the same

A righteous peace and no more innocent blood to stain

The soil of both foreign and birth lands.

You can speak the name Israel if you speak truly

But when you seek to speak lies

The G-D of truth blocks your eyes, stops your mouth,

Because you have stopped your ears to the cries

Of the oppressed peoples in countries ruled by the cruel

Who would twist, destroy and treat as fools

Those who write what they are told

As the ‘loudmouth’ states in bold type

What others like yourself, think

In silent lines unwritten, the thread of deceit is there

For those who care to see, carefully oh, so carefully concealed.

Yes, you do forbid yourself, because you know

That lies are too easy to see through

And do you know for certain what is proven and what is not?

You are only bound by what you want and not in truth

Go, go, go and in peace

Your last ink tells only half the tale.

Does Israel threaten destruction of any country?

Do its leaders rant and pound the lectern

Calling for an Arab Winter to descend,

Do they call for the death of all Islamic Peoples?

Or all Christians, despite what has been visited on their nation

Over several millennia

By many who would call themselves

Good Muslims or good Christians?

And it must also be said

That today it is over half a century too late to say

That the blood of six million and more cries out,

A loud echo through history books unless revised by those

Who seek to expunge the magnitude of their nation’s crimes.

Those rewriters of history who seek to take away the right of self defense

The only crime of the defenseless is to fight back

And you fail to see your own hypocrisies

You present only a part of the greater picture

As did Chamberlain so long ago and others who appeased the war machine

Disarmed those who would defend their countries.

You seek fame and notoriety

With your last ink, you stink

Muttering senile musings on that which you know naught

A dabbler in history, you urinate noisily on a tree

Failing to see the forest and landscape that surrounds you.

Perhaps your silence at this stage would be wise

Before we expose all your lies.