Uploaded September 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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EIGHTH – HOME RUN

I

Seeds of hatred cautiously carefully spin to generate
Tormenting strains of pernicious confinement
A thinness which unjust starvation creates and dictates
To bitter reality of long-term unjust imprisonment

You experienced that suicidal duty of an older age
Then captivity enclosed like a bad constant dream
Always to stifle the Germanic inflexible image
For freedom rushing cold as hill water in a stream

Castle Kolditz so dominating and majestic
Always missing the kingfisher’s colour in spring
Sometime odd serenely beautiful but not artistic
That castle of stone of plaster and iron rings

Installed amid the procedures of medieval fashion
Historic thought practised as Teutonic despotism


II

Alone muted without a proper participation
As soiled armies drowned in their own blood
Brave navies sank so sadly in silent desolation
Around insignificance of a gloomy watered mud

Meanwhile back at the sunny misunderstood camp
The loitered inner courtyard where interest provoked
Such lonely progression in the dry rot and the damp
Attendant plans that polyglot nations fruitlessly plotted

The special feeling pent up of successful escape
A liberty where solitary confinement constantly fires
That will to live, again to go for escape
With a motivation which sometimes only death sires

What an adventurous and mostly untold varied story
Enables you and us to share in the victor’s glory


PRR Harrogate September 1973