The Legacy

The photos show a pool with a slide
and a sand pit – an idyllic family setting
separated from the gas chambers by just a few yards.
His grandmother told the children to wash the strawberries
because they smelled of ash from the ovens.

“So you ask yourself, they had to die. I’m alive.
Why am I alive?
To carry this guilt, this burden
That must be the only reason I exist
to do what he should have done.”

Goeth was played by Ralph Fiennes.
“I kept thinking this has to stop
at some point they have to stop shooting.
If it doesn’t stop I’ll go crazy right here in this theatre.”
She left the cinema suffering from shock.

Both she and her brother chose to be sterilised.
“When my brother had it done, he said to me ‘I cut the line’.”
Seeing his father’s childhood home he broke down
kept repeating the word “insanity”.

Taken from an article in BBC magazine about the descendants of high profile Nazis, 22 May 2012. Some words and phrases omitted for scansion. Submitted by Grace Andreacchi.

You have an almost missionary zeal

So it’s perfectly
possible to live
a broadly satisfying life
all on your own, communing
with high art, being a lonely
heroic figure that walks
that long, dramatic path to
the piano centre stage.
This all works fine

as long as you cling
to the notion that the music
you’re playing is written
by dead, distant gods.
On the other hand, it all

blows apart when you start
integrating living composers,
as all the fixed points get swept
away; all composers take
on a human face, the church-like reverence
disappears, and suddenly audiences
become a collection of individuals
who may or may not
like what you’re doing. Promoters
start getting nervous, so you,
the performer,
have to start communicating
fast. That’s why.

From An Interview with Joanna MacGregor on SoundCircus. Submitted by Andrew Bailey.

Thirteen

Try to avoid your movements
in long lonely road after sunset,
which approaches the beach
where there is a poor light.

Item 13 of a photocopied ‘Advice to tourists’ sheet, handed out upon arriving at Kudle Beach, Gokarna, India. Submitted by John K.

From The Gentleman’s Companion, Volume Two

Being an Exotic Drinking Book, or
Around the World with Jigger, Beaker,
And Flask: THE SAIGON SPECIAL,
another ODD DRINK from the CAPITAL
CITY OF FRENCH INDO-CHINA & DATING
from the YEAR 1925…
This dates back to 19-
25 when the good old SS RESOLUTE
stopped in French Indo-China, and some
of our friends undertook to fly upriver
as near to the marvellous Cambodian
ruins of Angkor, as might be sane,
then motor back via Pnom Penh—imagine
a place called Pnom Penh—to Bangkok
to meet ship again at Pak Nam….
The plane reminded us of a celery crate
decorated, respectively, with an electric fan
and an evinrude motor. It sputtered and
died finally coming to rest on the Saigon
River, with no chance to walk home….
This addition to any anthology of damp-
ness was one remembered aftermath
when back in Saigon, and muttering about
the contrariness of fate generally.
On checking we find that it is a slightly
sweeter Jerusalem Between-
the Sheets, plus a nip of egg white.

From The Gentleman’s Companion: Being an Exotic Drinking Book or, Around the World with Jigger, Beaker, and Flask Vol.2, CH Baker (New York, 1946). Submitted by Jerome.

Found Shaunette

When I first drove
the Carlisle/ Wiltshire commute,
I’d do it southbound non-stop.

It was four hours or so
and I was keen to get home.

But, when they started the road-works,
it drew out and I started making stops:
two usually (Tebay and one other).

Some mornings I’d leave Swindon at 4AM
and head north for a 9AM meeting.

I have not been south of Manchester since July.

An email from a friend, Shaunette, sent in June 2011. Submitted by Martin.