Rudolf Hagelstange (1912-84)- for Olympia Bobou

Yes, these are berries we share with dark birds.
These are stones we are as silent as,
except for their cry at being whirred
along the lake, their gasp at breaking topaz

for just a moment. The heights are horror
that uphold the boat you are at home in,
where Galilee storms and Gomorrah’s
subsidence in sulphur, do not happen.

All this balance is from a pole-vault,
over the bar, upon the tough sand.
The last-basking days had no result,
except night’s small fruit, for which the birds land.

Your verse comes down, having leapt from its tread -
no track to picked sloes, no wake to lake-bed.

Woodford Halse - 30 October 2023

Rudolf Hagelstange was a German poet and pole-vaulter. Though a household name as a war reporter from the Italian Front and Kesselring’s Army, he was involved with the German Resistance, which explain how Giovanni Mardersteig was able to print Hagelstange’s sonnets in Verona in March 1945. Mardersteig ran safe-houses for Jews, partisans and other proscribed persons.

Hagelstange was a Nordhausen friend of my wife’s grandmother and her brothers. He and her older brothers went to the same Gymnasium. I acknowledge the gift of Hagelstange’s Venezianisches Credo from Dr Olympia Bobou, and it is to one of the sonnets from that anthology, that this sonnet of mine responds - Wo wir die Beeren mit den Voegeln teilten.