Hal G.P. Colebatch: Three Poems

Two sides to my head

I invited two lots of acquaintances to my party,

The saner and more hygienic writers that I knew

And also some lawyers that I knew.

Complete Apartheid ruled.

Afterwards, members of both groups

Came to me and said:

“We didn’t know there were still people like that.”

Hal G.P. Colebatch

_____________________________________

The tourist has instruction

In Hamburg, one fine day in 1973

I was sitting at a sidewalk café table drinking coffee.

I saw an elderly gentleman looking for a seat,

And invited him to join me.

He spoke good English, though accented,

And had old-fashioned good manners.

We got to talking, ranged over a number of things, and he

Plainly had a learned, intellectually lively mind,

A professor, I thought.

I was too tactful to talk about the war

(“Don’t mention … etc”

Thank you, John Cleese)

But our conversation drifted that way (I swear, I didn’t start it!)

Hitler, he said, knew in his heart it was lost

When the first great assault on Russia failed.

“We all knew the Wehrmacht had to keep advancing or it was finished.

And then America came in.”

After that, he said, Hitler was behaving like a prisoner,

Without hope or free-will, “And I know how prisoners behave.”

“On top of that, Himmler was irrational.

He wanted an SS State,

With fuel from fields of dandelions and bakehouse chimney fumes,

And as soon as we dared dabble in nuclear research,

He, very fortunately, had the Party press denounce it:

‘Jewish physics raises its head again.’”

“We?” I asked, and “Very fortunately?

How do you know these things?”

“Oh,” he said, with a strange expression. “I know them well.

I’m Albert Speer.”

Hal G. P. Colebatch

________________________________

Alcove

If there is still room in his fond memory

For the one he broke up with

After they had spent five years together

There is a special alcove

For the one

Who comforted him afterwards

For five days.

Hal G. P. Colebatch