Vultures is a poem that makes me shiver. I've always wondered what I would have done, had I had the choice of whether to go along with Nazism, or to fight against it. I like to think I'd have fought, but I can't be sure. None of us can be sure until we come up against the real situations. It's like Not My Business - a man can ignore the wrongs being done as long as he has food on the table, or can take sweeties home for the children.
I think it's the choice of words that make it most chilling - the contrast betwen affection and despair, a charnel house or Belsen, and a roost, a nest, a home.
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The poem VULTURES is a poem dark enough to give you shivers down your spine.
The prospect of the Vultures picking
the eyes of a swollen
corpse in a water-logged
trench and eating the things in its bowel, isn't a very pleasant sight in my mind, and neither is the prospect of the commandant from Belsen and the "fumes of
human roast clinging
rebelliously to his hairy
nostrils", when you read these sections, you would think that there was no good, no love in this world, however,when you read on you discover the writer talking about firstly how the Vultures then nestle beside each other in a loving manor then about the commandent of Belsen stopping at a sweety shop to buy his child a treat before going home. This tries to show that love can occur at the darkest, of moments, that love can be found where least expected. Or, the opposite, where there is love, there is always evil.
I regret to say this, but just because a person is evil, doesn't mean to say that, that person cannot love, cannot bear affection for others, hate can be a contrast between evil and love, an evil person can bear hate but at the same time love.
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