in a mobile home.
I called on him
to stop his complaints,
my hand on his various wing.
He had a volume
which he studied carefully
and, though weary and depressed,
I heard him utter his tragic history
with coffee and cakes
by the promised sea.
He said
Perhaps
my problem is action,
and I had to agree.
He had come to see
the play as a failure,
a general calamity
in five episodes.
In that lost Globe,
the bleak critics regarded it
as a base failure.
My own position in this matter
has long been clear
—for I condone the implantation
of form
in form—
and within the play
I also put a play,
and it is all action.
15
[a splendid
lamentation]
[under constraints
the
scarred
form
steps
in]
act
two
[He
bolts
his
quiet
sovereign
to
a cross]
[Assembly
of the globe]
[Because
visits
him
in the little
chamber]
[he
points
to
a text
under
the
world]
[the scale
levels]
act
one
[they
cut
down
the
body]
[What
comes
in]
[a succession of ambassadors]
[need
without]
[Horatio
the
voice
of
unhappiness
acting
up
a
little]
[Assembly
of the
Other]
[voting
beyond]
[Egypt
magnified]
[But
the Sea
continues
within]
[The
mouth
of
the
Secretary
working
hard]
[The
ceiling
suffering stress]
[repeatedly
forcing the hand
through higher
levels]
[The
book
endlessly
Changes]
[In
a
nightmare
the
Given
appears]
[they are
United
in autumn]
[Office
work
beyond]
[He
types perhaps]
[They
Minister
in
The
field]
[making a
negative]
[they part
Without]
16
I tried to cut through
all our hurried centuries,
lost in a forest within.
Men
broken by war
emerged in frightful shape—
more than human
but also less,
they were quite aware,
the sovereign dead,
that time is like a window
opening up the sad patterns of never.
As one they advanced—
Lloyd George
Georges Clemenceau
Adolph Hitler
—through history.
But the past does not follow
so straightforward a path
said I
(predictably in Italian),
and, burning
under their masters,
they proclaimed
the world a pendulum.
It is possible,
but this gives rise
to the often-heard complaint
that repetition is unavoidable.
Still time issues into today,
little fathers.
The years, I believe,
can be shaped with one's hands.
The world
—its obscure moving fields,
Persian tragedies,
and countries in peace—
I had to inform
that council of the lost,
remains an instrument,
a valve instrument,
which, when waning,
is perfectly clear in the pit
—and, being given
to such classical concepts
as freedom and necessity,
laboriously continued
in the traditional way—
I believe I believe.
17
Stripped of illusions
on the wheel of innumerable I
my my
in the flames,
friends and colleagues,
I distinguished the summit
of the tabled world.
It was a happy time—
a time I bear in mind,
for now the Minister
was a pure formality.
I put an old shoe on
and, arriving in autumn thus,
in excellent health,
at the summit started looking
through bush and stone
for further instructions in Latin.
There above all
it appeared to be warm,
but I felt a certain coolness
when I decided to remove my name
formally.
There there,
nothing personal—
on his manoeuvring wings
Prince Also,
the straw fellow,
studied the atmosphere.
He evidently found it cold too,
and as a symbol of his friendship
asked me into the chapel
to check through voluminous archives
taken from nations.
I started to write my memoirs,
the old fringe of world
become a centre
in which I moved.
One of my last acts
was the transfer of the works east.
This was essential
because of the constraints it imposed
on the West.
It was happy hour
for the next thousand years.
Freed from burden
in the elder kingdom,
the former world set
beyond the West—
as the playwright Hebbel once wrote,
1st eine kleine Welt
in der die groβe ihre Probe hält?
A is the ground for the.
18
On a cold winter's day,
a pack of porcupines huddled close
seeking refuge from the frost.
Soon however
they had to move apart,
their home being pain.
Thus in his fable
Schopenhauer
the philosopher describes
(albeit unintentionally)
my emotions
on the train back again.
I recall a playground
in open country,
the sudden upsurge
of a building—
little perceptions<
br />
travelling the Union lines
to the conclusion within—
strange with wisdom,
to say nothing of
the messianic sense of Paine.
It was cold
in that tragically designed
techno-scientific vehicle of self,
a devil screaming in pursuit
The world is constraint.
Thinking of Professor F,
the grand old man,
I opened his book on union.
This book,
taken thoroughly apart
and put together again
with relation to me,
soon came unstuck—
whereupon it proved impossible
to obtain any understanding of
John 2:1
union.
Deep down, citizens,
without wishing to set myself up
as a psychiatrist, I am convinced
that subconscious oceans
unshattered in the early years
promise a return to former union
one said.
It was Margaret,
the ardent believer,
hammering down the issue.
We should believe she said,
for the only way out
is to accept this world…
So facing the countries I had left,
with the East in view
as Christian
and Furthermore
renewed their quarrels,
I avoided speaking
in my unhappy state,
overcome by glory—
whereupon Silence leant across
and asked whether I would be good
enough to man the wheel.
(I consider him my maker,
and thus was disposed
to maintain good relations).
With the utmost courtesy,
I Kurt Waldheim
frowned at the view
—the river sparkling outside,
a man delivering a sofa,
the high echelons of the saved,
and the moribund
unhappy queues
of generations who faded
generation
generation
to the West
throughout history,
ruined utterly I believe,
moving still
over prosperous empires
one after another—
blind people that see,
I believe
seeking a way
without even a measure of identity
yet at home in the remains.
I have seen that living line of people
turning with time
on bridges to the East.
They have gone far
with their replica virgin and child.
However,
the Union Central
finally left that country's people
who long to come in
—nobody in,
everybody in—
Death opening the door.
19
Drawn in outer space
on a ceiling of night,
a hinged balance held true.
That balance
—its mechanisms
worked into the unknown—
emerged
in the star systems
which turn in union
without history
as we know it
on this planet.
I recognize it
to the East
said I to the West,
not made,
not given,
over the world.
Devoted observers,
it seems to me
a just structure.
John 1:5
And my search
for peace underground
now come to an end
—constraints accepted
in spirit as well as in letter,
the line spent,
the theatres in abandon—
I viewed the balances
more clearly than ever before.
Epilogue
I stood before the remains of the war,
whistling
until a door opened within
my life.
My my,
what guided me through?
No answer
can be given.
However, I feel my study of conscience
engendered in me that dream
which showed me
a small tempered globe.
Nowhere have I found another
of that material.
There is nothing stronger.
Yet I am not without hope,
citizens.
I am a believer in silent prayers
relinquished.
EPILOGUES
Epilogue
In the late summer of 1945, on the outskirts of a small town to the south of Vienna, my wife, my infant daughter Liselotte and I stood before the gutted remains of my parents' house. The war was over at last and, after countless trials and tribulations, we refugees had found our way home from the Austrian Alps. Our quest, however, was not yet over: we sought not only our parents but also a roof over our heads.
The appearance of my parents' house dashed all our hopes: a ruin scorched by fire with the wind whistling at will through the broken window-panes. Utterly dejected and in silence we crept around the garden to the back, convinced that nobody could be living within the shattered walls—until suddenly we heard voices, and a door opened Within seconds we were being embraced by my father and mother: both had survived the war.
Forty years have passed since that day, which, after years of dictatorship and military service, marked for me the start to a new life a life that at the outset had been filled with insecurity and anxiety about our future—alife that had also been marked by tragic events and experiences that were to determine my future thoughts and actions.
Many years later, after I had been elected by the United Nations to the highest office that the international community can bestow, I was repeatedly asked: where—behind all the impartiality of the office—were my real roots? Which principles had governed my life and work? What had guided me along the lonely path through the undergrowth of ideologies and vested interests?
Like all essential questions no simple answer can be given In retrospect however I feel that certain decisive influences can be traced: the history of Europe, my continent, and Austria, my homeland; my bitter experience of war; my study of law and my diplomatic career; as well as my belief in democracy and the tenets of Christianity. Together they helped me to observe the claims of my conscience amidst all the different and often conflicting advice submitted by my international advisers.
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