Friday, July 24, 2015

Poetry: Message to the Greeks from Merkel


Merkel the compassionate

Mutti* Merkel Speaks Finally of Debt Forgiveness

The forgiveness we received in 1953
bears no comparison to the situation Greece
has put itself in today. Whatever
criticisms might be levelled
at the German governments
of the first half of the last century,
they didn’t waste good money
on crazy schemes to allow
the school caretaker retire at fifty five,
but invested wisely
in long term infrastructure
and engineering projects:
tanks to pacify Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia;
enough gas canisters to almost
carry out their apparently impossible
election promises; V-2 rockets
with ‘England’ written on them.

My predecessor, whatever else
may be said of him, didn’t
squander our nation’s treasure giving
free kebabs and ouzo to officials
of the Ministry of Transport as they woke
from their compulsory afternoon nap,
but shopped around frugally
for enough excellent leather boots
to properly police the streets
of Prague, Cracow, Bucharest, Minsk,
Liege, Amsterdam, Lyon;
after much haggling and complaint
purchased, at ridiculously miniscule prices,
the millions of Stahlhelm helmets
spent in our valiant attempt
to annex the Soviet oilfields in the Caucasus.
Though it didn’t come to exact fruition,
we died trying, and took enough of them with us
to make it almost worth it.

Go cause a nice world war,
my little olive eating friend,
and in its aftermath, we’ll talk.
Play your cards with sufficient insanity,
all across the map, while wearing outfits
of the required eccentricity
and you’ll find our terms
extraordinarily generous.

KEVIN HIGGINS 

*term of endearment used to refer to Angela Merkel by her supporters. Means “Mum”.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...


So Kevin Higgins wrote this, right...certainly not "Mother" Merkel.
As a satire on her iron-fisted stances - especially re GREECE?!

Julieanna
Los Angeles

Richard Mellor said...

Yes Julieanna you're correct