Three Sonnets Of Albrecht Haushofer

I. Companions
Today as into torpid dreams I sank,
I saw the whole crowd pass across the scene:
Saw Yorck and Moltke, Schulenberg, Schwerin,
Hassel and Popitz, Helferich and Planck—
Not one but of his duty was aware,
Not one but was to interest a stranger;
In glory and in power, in deathly danger,
They took the people's life into their care.
Look at them well: they are worth contemplating:
They all had intellect and rank and name;
On the same errand to these cells they came,
And for them all the hangman's noose was waiting.
At times rule passes to a madman's gang,
And then the best heads are the ones they hang.
II. Acheron
If on the gods above there's no reliance
Then in the depths must Acheron be stirred.
So runs a poet's memorable word:
My father often said it in defiance.
His eye was blinded by the dream of might.
But I have known the misery and shame:
Destruction, famine, slaughter, wounds and flame,
The shuddering horror of a devils' night.
Farewell to everything that life holds dear
Deliberately and often I have said—
To country, love, and work, to wine and bread.
Now, overreached by darkness, I am here;
And Acheron is close and life is far.
A weary eye looks vainly for a star.
III. Mother
I see you standing in the candle's glow
Framed in a doorway's heavy arch of stone.
You feel the mountain coolness moving down.
It's chilly, Mother … but you do not go.
You watch me hurry off to that unsure
Remainder that my fate holds in its keeping;
You smile with such a smile as is pure weeping,
And feel the pain for which there is no cure.
I see you standing in your lovelight's glow,
And on your forehead as your white hair lifts
A cold breath from enormous darkness drifts.
You watch me vanish, then your head sinks low.
The candle's beams are still thrown far and wide—
It's chilly, Mother … Mother—go inside.