No Austerity

The Shame of Europe

Close to chaos, because you did not obey the markets;
and You far from the Land, that gave you the cradle.

All that You asked for with your soul, and You thought you had found it,
will now be abolished, and will be priced as rusty scrap metal.

As a borrower persecuted and naked, a country is suffering;
and You, instead of the thanks that you owe her, you offer hollow words.

Condemned to poverty this County, whose wealth graces Museums:
the loot that You guard.

Those who with the force of arms had attacked the Country blessed with islands,
carried Hölderlin in their military pack.

A Country that is least accepted, yet its dictators, once,
had been accepted by You as allies.

A Land without rights,
whose belt the obdurate authority keeps on tightening.

Against You Antigone resists, wearing black,
and across the Country the people is dressed in mourning, who in the past was Your host.

And yet, outside the Country, the followers of Croesus and those who are like him,
everything that shines like gold the hoard it in Your vault.

Drink, at last, drink! shout the servants of the Commissioners;
but Socrates furiously returns the cup to You full to the brim.

They will curse in a chorus, that they are Your gods,
whose Olympus Your will seeks to expropriate.

Deprived of spirit, You will perish without the Land,
whose spirit created You, Europe.


Günter Wilhelm Grass