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Poetry
by J.S. Porter
A Found Poem *
for John Robert Colombo
The Catholic Church gave him its blessing
Hugo Boss clothed his armies
Bertelsmann published his training manuals
Standard Oil fueled his airplanes
Ford provided his jeeps and trucks
The Rockefeller Foundation financed his medical research
Deutsche Bank funded the construction of his camps
IG Farben (later called Bayer, BASF and Hoechest) used prisoners to make the gas that killed them
Krupp, Thyssen, Siemens, VARTA, Bosch, Daimler-Benz, Volkswagen, BMW propelled an economic base
Swiss banks made money from prisoners’ gold jewellery and teeth
Unilever, Westinghouse and General Electric boosted their investments and profits in Germany
Coca-Cola invented Fanta for the German market
ITT received a multimillion-dollar settlement for damages caused by Allied bombing*
Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich
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*Information from Eduardo Galeano’s Mirrors: Stories for Almost Everyone.
John Robert Colombo is one of the founding fathers of the contemporary Found Poem. His “Last Letter” about Dr. Norman Bethune’s final instructions before his death is a classic of the genre.
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[Distillate © HA&L + J.S. Porter {from the Greek bios} -- the course of a life.]
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