The pounding of boots marching
shake the dykes and roads
of my beloved Holland.
From the east our Germanic cousins
have again exploded
in fiery nationalism.
This land is rendered up
as a meal for the Beast.
And with us Belgium, France, and Greece
will fall while Britain counts
the hours and her dead.
Lamentations of oppression:
race-hatred and the military mind
are forced into every facet
of human activity.
Rotterdam and Arnhem lie burning,
farms are flooded with evil's terror.
No longer live I in a land lush
with flowers, fields of food.
The past is destroyed:
Rembrandt and Van Gogh cry
for freedom now crushed.
The perverse "People's Party" pushes
its heels into the heart of a Europe
bleeding, the "guardian of civilization."
Hope only glimmers from the waves
of distant shores and from that
lonely isle that must defend us
in this century of wars.
George Cassutto
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