Gunter Grass, the elderly German novelist and former Waffen-SS inductee, raised eyebrows recently with a controversial poem criticising Israeli foreign policy. The Propagandist’s crack team of investigative (literary) journalists began delving into the affair immediately, and have now submitted their conclusions. Unfortunately, they are obvious.

First, they say, Germany and Israel seem to have some kinda crazy history/ background/ story thing goin’ on. Secondly, for chrissakes, who but a German writes a poem about foreign policy? Thirdly, the following excerpts from other Grass poetry on Judeo-MidEast themes seem to reveal a certain... ambivalence on the subject.

I think that I shall never see
A poem as homely as Tel Aviv.
Poems are made by fools like me,
Poetry that analyses foreign policy
Which in German is called Poesituttheingotfermechten...

… Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falconer cannot hear Golda Meir.

Roses are red,
UN helmets are blue.
Palestinians love their children,
Don’t you?

A drop of water
Sighs. Uphold Resolution
338-A, ja?

Profileration’s
Just awful, like some flowers
In the attic, or not.

Cloud over Tehran
Spells out, please quit it with the
Bomb menacings, Jews.

(-- From Grass’s 1998 haiku sequence “Bummkeit”; the title means “the urge to speak plainly in an admittedly delicate, even fraught, social situation.”)

I don’t know about you,
But I can’t find a rhyme for Netanyahu.

… Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the freedom-fighters tunneling under it...

How do I respect thy right to exist? Let me enumerate the ways,
With these conditions and codicils and interpreted treaties.
… How do I respect thee? Very complicatedly, baby.

Lyle Neff is a Political Satirist for The Propagandist